A technical writing class taught at City College has completed its yearly evaluation of all the CUNY websites, and BC’s website is Number 1!

Here’s how the rankings were derived:

There were seven evaluation teams, comprised of students only.
Each team judged the individual college websites using the evaluation instrument.
After all teams had completed the evaluations, they ranked the colleges.
4 points were assigned to the top college in each team, 3 points to the second-ranking college, and so on. Thus, the highest possible total was 28 points.

For the student evaluators, what put BC’s website way out front were the excellent and varied graphics and images of campus life, and our wealth of easily accessible information in all areas.

Curious about the rankings? Here they are:

1. Brooklyn College
2. Hunter
3. John Jay
4. Baruch
5. Bronx Community
6. Kingsborough Community
7. Lehman College (tied with CCNY, at 3 points each)

ITS is delighted to be praised by a school’s most valuable resource—the students—and acknowledges that our website is the result of the efforts of all members of the BC community. With the continued collaboration of students, faculty and staff, we hope to be Number 1 for many evaluations to come.

The recent and ongoing damage wreaked by the infamous Code Red Worm is well known. Less well known is how ITS Network Manager David Best saved BC from calamitous network problems this past July, when he detected and neutralized the Code Red Worm. David stopped the attack at the very earliest stages of infection and BC escaped it virtually unscathed, while web servers all over the world were compromised in numbers too large to track. “The culprit was a private web server in a department with old, unpatched software,” explained David, referring to a security hole in Microsoft’s operating software.

Acting as Network Security Administrator is one of David’s many responsibilities. A veritable technology sentinel, his formidable task is to be on the lookout for any unusual infiltration of our vast networks and to keep our systems as up-to-date and protected as possible. If he spots suspicious activity, he works to identify the threat and to neutralize it. Since the “best defense is often an offense,” David continually scans particular websites for potential problems. “I go to the sites where the bad guys go, but that anyone can go to,” he explains,“to see what new exploits have been discovered.” He also constantly observes BC network activity for abnormalities. The critical benefit of all this research is that he is able to learn about a virus or worm before it goes into general circulation and preemptively strike against it. David obtains and keeps patches on hand for just such situations. He also uses numerous specialized software packages, both commercial and of his own design, to monitor and protect our systems. For example, BC desktop computers are protected network-wide by Sophos, an anti-virus program, and the college’s MS Exchange e-mail systems are protected by the Antigen e-mail virus protection system. Both have performed admirably and have successfully protected the college community from numerous virus attacks.

In the case of the Code Red Worm, David noted unusually high activity within the campus network, which was interfering with network access throughout the campus. After intensive monitoring and analysis, he determined that it was a Windows NT server somewhere within the campus—but where? It is difficult to identify the location of any given device just by watching its traffic, and this device had not even been installed by ITS. David narrowed his search, in successive order, to the building, floor, and, finally, to a computer in a specific room. He found that computer in just two hours. Disarming the worm was simple: David pulled the network plug. The infection was stopped cold.

Pulling the plug took care only of the immediate problem in that particular computer. Now, David had to diagnose the problem so that measures could be taken to prevent an epidemic. That required the analysis of millions of data packets streaming through BC’s protective firewall in order to discern unusual patterns—the “symptoms” of the infection. After hours of this tedious, tiring, eye-straining work, he determined that the symptoms were those of the Code Red Worm. The correct software patch (update) was then “prescribed” for the infected computer.

It was fortunate that only one computer had been infected with the Code Red Worm, but the incident required that David check BC’s entire network, including all web servers, for vulnerability to the worm. Hours of data scanning followed in which David determined that our main web servers were okay, but a few other servers were vulnerable or had been infected. Their system administrators were notified and those servers have been patched. With that, the Code Red Worm was completely eradicated. Thanks to David’s vigilance and amazing diagnostic skills, BC was spared days more of network slowdowns and service disruptions.

In the weeks that followed the worm, hundreds of thousands of servers around the world infected with the Code Red Worm continued to attack the college in record numbers—at a rate of up to 10 attacks per second, with millions of attacks over time. Our firewall systems were updated to deny access and prevent these attacks from entering our campus and infecting our computers.

The Code Red Worm was not an anomaly. In the past year alone David has battled several other major intrusions. While each has resulted in hours of network down time, they would certainly have caused far more extensive damage without early detection and intervention. Unfortunately, the stakes are rising. The campus is increasingly dependent upon web systems for teaching, information delivery, administrative processing and remote access. At the same time, the volume and ingenuity of threats continue to increase dramatically. ITS is increasing its vigilance by tightening security and further limiting the kinds of data traffic that can enter our campus. Users with their own server resources must be equally careful to keep their private servers up-to-date and secure. They are encouraged to consult with ITS to learn how to best set up and maintain their systems. The safest bet however, is to use only ITS-managed, centralized facilities. It’s a dangerous network world out there and ITS is glad we have the “Best” cop on our network beat.

BC students have been praising WEBMAIL, a simple, easy-to-use program that provides access to e-mail from any computer with an Internet connection. WEBMAIL is now going campus-wide for the convenience of all faculty and staff with a BC e-mail address. You can read, reply to, move and forward mail, manage your folders and preferences, and access the BC directory.

WEBMAIL is simple. It requires no set-up and access is easy. Here’s all you need to do:

1. On the Internet, go to this URL: http://webmail.brooklyn.cuny.edu
2. At the log-in screen, enter:
     bcnet\your user ID (e.g.: bcnet\lindseyj)
     Password (your e-mail account password)
3. Click log in

That’s it! Note that the log-in screen has a “Language” drop-down box; the default setting is “English.”
Of course, ITS continues to offer remote access to e-mail from either your Outlook or Outlook Express mail program. For further information on the Outlook programs, contact Network Support at 718.677.6180, or Deborah Kern-Best at x5861.

ITS joins the BC community in expressing profound sympathy for all Americans and especially those who lost loved ones in the tragedy of September 11th.

Brooklyn College Web Site Copyright ©1998-2001 Brooklyn College. All Rights Reserved.