Dear Faculty, Members, Visitors, and Staff,

We are pleased to introduce you to the next generation of secure remote access to IAS network resources when traveling or working from home.

Our new VPN system, known as OpenVPN, is easier to use, has a higher level of security, and is compatible with more devices than the previous system.  Via this announcement, we are encouraging everyone to transition their devices to the new platform.  To begin to leverage OpenVPN, please see the Installation Guide, located at:

Dear Staff,

I'm writing to let you know of a change happening on June 27th, 2018 to our Central Authentication Service (CAS) front page.  CAS is used for a single place to sign in for many of our websites that we use here at the IAS.  We are upgrading to a new version, which will involve an update to the front page where you type in your username and password.

Old CAS login screen:

New CAS login screen:

What is having a Meltdown and what does a Spectre have to do with it?

What Breach?

Aww man, it's us

As a security professional, I spend a lot of my time making sure that the bad guys aren't able to break in.  I set up all the fancy firewalls and anti-virus to keep us safe.  But what happens when a user unknowingly gives up their credentials due to a phish?  Well, if you are lucky, the spammers just use it to spam the world.  If you are unlucky, the figure out how to attack the inside of your network to get to the crown jewels.

Protecting your home network with OpenDNS for free

Deep packet inspection is a methodology that network security professionals have been doing for many years.  It involves looking at the data going over the network and determining if anything malicious is going on based on what's in those packets.

My last post on Ransomware was in 2013 when we were being hit by Cryptolocker.  I mentioned that in around 2010 Data Doctor 2010 was the ransomware in the news.  According to Wikipedia, the first "ransomware" was called the "AIDS Trojan" in 1989, which didn't encrypt your files, but merely hid their data by encrypting the filenames.

Poodle and the Beast, this isn't a love story

Three years ago, Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo demonstrated ^[1] an attack against one of the methods used in securing Internet traffic.