Who are the members of Physics Computing Services?

• PCS = Physics Computing Services
• team of four
• support administrative, research, and teaching related computing activities in the department
• located on 8th floor (Rooms 805, 805A, 805B, 805C)
• reach us at: pcs@physics.utoronto.ca

• computer hardware and peripherals
• operatings systems
• application software
• network management – IP Addresses, Perimeter Firewall, VLANs, Private Networks (e.g. undergraduate labs)
• network services : Email, Web
• network hardware: switches

NOTE : Professors pay PCS for many of these services.

PCS is available during work hours from approximately 7am to 5pm from Monday to Friday. At our discretion, we will answer emails outside of these hours.

We are not the Rogers Call Centre with 7x24 service. We do not have a Facebook page or a Twitter account.

• use the search engine
• use pages for:
  • account registration
  • computer registration
  • printing configuration
  • set up email reader programs

• should have basic contact info on Physics website
• info may be wrong
• info may change
• Let us know (Please!!)

• We have a departmental, web-accessible database
• public data is reflected on web site
• make sure your data is correct
  • tell us if it isn't

Every student is entitled to:

• a Physics server account with a corresponding email address
• registration of a computer on the Physics network

A Physics account gives you:

• 10GB of storage – soon to increase substantially
• a (primitive) web presence

• an email address of the form::

  someuser@physics.utoronto.ca
  

• access to some commercial science software:
  • Matlab (recent version)
  • Mathematica (only two simultaneous users)

NOTE : Very recent versions of Outlook need some extra work to function with our Physics email system. We will provide instructions, but strongly suggest that Outlook users have their Physics email forwarded to the @mail.utoronto.ca or @utoronto.ca account.

• SMTP Server: smtp-auth.physics.utoronto.ca
  • Port: 587 (may need 465 with older versions of Outlook)
  • Encryption: STARTTLS, TLS, SSL
• IMAP Server: maildir.physics.utoronto.ca
  • Port: 143 (may need 993 with Outlook)
  • Encryption: STARTTLS, TLS, SSL
• Why don't we use the standard names so that my device can auto-configure itself?
  • backwards compatibility for existing users
    • if you see something stupid in the IT world, backwards-compatibility is probably the reason

To register your computer with the Physics network, please visit our Registration Forms page.

You can also find the forms by doing a search for PCS Forms from the front page of our website.

• we have a webmail service for Physics and Atmospheric Physics

• webmail is decent, but still recommend real email client like Thunderbird

Usernames might be fred and jen, with corresponding email addresses of:

• fred@physics.utoronto.ca
• jen@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca

dependent on which server you have your account on. (A small number of people will have accounts on both the main Physics server and on the Atmospheric Physics server.)

The Server setting defaults to the main physics server environment – Maildir IMAP Server – but you can also select the Atmospheric Physics server or one of a couple of other small group servers.

• Physics printers:
  • ps1 - (MP 1002)
  • ps2 - (MP 058)
  • color1 (MP 202 - Library)
• Atmosp printers
  • lp6 - (MP 622)
  • lpclr2 - (MP 622)
• See Physics website for information on configuring your computer to access these printers

• wireless not managed by PCS
• authenticate via UTORid
• see https://wireless.utoronto.ca
• not considered a part of Physics networks

• many security failures over the years
  • many due to graduate students giving away passwords
  • possibly a couple of cases of travelling faculty and students having credentials sniffed
• one student gave away credentials twice
• IMPORTANT
  • PCS will never ask you to send your email and password via email
  • Email is not secure

What is Phishing?

• Phishing is attempting to acquire information (and sometimes, indirectly, money) such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

• Phishers may occasionally ask for credentials directly

  This Email is from UTORONTO Customer Care and we are sending it to
  every UTORONTO Accounts Owner for safety. we are having
  congestion's due to the anonymous registration of web mail accounts
  so we are shutting down some Webmail accounts and your account was
  among those to be deleted.
  
  We are sending you this email so that ...  
  or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
  
  *Email Username :..............
  *Email Password :..............
  *Date of Birth :..................
  *Country or Territory: ........
  

• More often, you are directed to visit a link or open a document and follow some directions.

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will
not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your
attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account 
after 48 Hours of receiving this warning will lose his or her 
account permanently.

Thanks.
SITE ADMINISTRATOR.

Fraudulent messages can be detected in many ways:

• URLs outside the Physics or University Domains (e.g. www.contact123.com)
• non-specific wording
  • Customer Care
  • Webmail Team
  • Physics.UToronto.CA Webmail Team
• we only refer to our unit as Physics Computing Services
• not signed by an individual
  • almost all PCS emails will be ``signed'' by one of:
    • Steven Butterworth
    • Iulian Comanean
    • Galina Velikova
    • Gregory Wu
• Sometimes you must look at email headers

The following message provides an example of raw header data. Of particular interest are the Received: lines as these provide the set of hosts through which the message has passed. The last one is of particular interest as it generally indicates the originating host. In this case, a message claiming to come from admin@utoronto.ca can be seen to originate in Taiwan (mail.math.nccu.edu.tw).

Instructions for viewing this header information will be provided in another document on our website.

Return-Path: <admin@utoronto.ca>
Delivered-To: bworth@physics.utoronto.ca
Received: by helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Postfix, from userid 57)
    id 39FB9140A07; Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:51:22 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from mail.math.nccu.edu.tw (mail.math.nccu.edu.tw [140.119.65.101])
    by helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6C42140A05;
    Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:51:21 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from math.nccu.edu.tw (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by mail.math.nccu.edu.tw (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A2A11655470;
    Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:04:37 +0800 (CST)
From: "Utoronto Help Desk" <admin@utoronto.ca>
Reply-To: helpdeskunit@rambler.ru
Subject: Site Maintenance
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:04:37 +0800
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

The recipient is sent to a web page controlled by phisher. Note the inclusion of utoronto as the leading component in the link below. Since the owner of a domain can name there computers however they like, one could find mcgill, ubc and harvard as well, but all controlled by bytehost7.com.

Dear Webmail subscriber,

We hereby announce to you that your email account has exceeded its
storage limit. You will be unable to send and receive mails and
your email account will be deleted from our server. To avoid this
problem, you are advised to verify your email account by clicking
on the link below.

http://utoronto.byethost7.com

Thank you.
The Department of Physics at the University of Toronto

IMPORTANT

• PCS will never ask you to send your email and password via email
• Email is not secure

If we cannot find a secure mechanism for transferring information, we may arrange for a phone call.

• Physics has a long-standing rift in computer management
• two distinct organizational groupings:
  • Physics (Core)
  • Atmosp (Atmospheric Physics)
• leads to some confusion
  • some differences in resource management
  • e.g. Atmosp has IDL software; Physics does not
  • Atmosp students frequently forced to drop Physics accounts in favour of Atmosp accounts
    • username@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca
• working to eliminate the remaining differences

• University has rules about use of campus networks and computing resources
• short version: respect others; don't abuse resources; DON'T BE A JERK
• all normal laws apply (e.g. harrassment, threats, downloading unlicensed material)
• avoid excessive downloading (even of legal material) - the network is a shared resource

• turn off P2P file downloading services when on Physics network
• all network devices using Physics network must be registered with PCS
  • computers, switches, routers, printers …
  • registration forms on web
• notify PCS when planning to download more than 10GB in a day
  • helps us separate legitimate versus suspicious activity