IT Support Portal
How to contact us:
- For IT problems please contact the IT staff member assigned to your institute or use the email address of the ZAW IT.
- eMail: inst-service-zaw@urz.uni-heidelberg.de
- Dimitri Maschinski (URZ)
Monday - Friday: 09:00 - 13:00
- CURRENT -
Attention! -> Pishing- Spoofing- and blackmail emails!
Pishing-mails
The phishing emails have been known for a long time and try to get your personal data, passwords or bank details through the prospect of fantastic profits:
"You WON! Tell us your bank details so that we can transfer the money!"
Or you are asked to click on a link or open an attachment.
Behind it is usually hidden malware that can damage your computer!
At the Verbraucherzentrale you will find the characteristics of a phishing e-mail.
Spoofing-mails
Then came the spoofing mails (emails with fake sender) that pretended to be from "your" financial institution and once again asked for your data to be validated, clicked on a link, or opened an attachment
Spoofing emails from university-internal e-mail addresses have been appearing in this form for several months. Often with a seemingly innocent attachment, for example an "invoice". Very sneaky is that the programmers to use adjacent addresses, so you know the person whose address was forged actually!
Usually an address of an employee of the university is forged. In the older variant is next to an additional address, of which one can assume, however, that it is also fake. Since all university addresses are usually public and remain so, it is easy for counterfeiters to fish and copy them from the internet. It is unlikely that the addresses were actually hacked.
Information on phishing can be found on the URZ page: Increased amount of phishing mails
und Phishing Campaign Warning: Expiration of a library account.
and when Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik:
PISHING.
Here is also information about spoofing:
Gefährliche Kuckuckseier: E-Mails mit falschem Absender.
Blackmailer-mails
Since the summer of 2018, there is a new variant of spoofing emails, which go hand in hand with a very concrete aggressive blackmail. The counterfeiter sends a mail to the copied original address, this means you will receive a mail from yourself! It is pretended that not only your e-mail address is "hacked", which is not true (!!!) but also your entire computer. For example, the blackmailers pretend that they also hacked your webcam and filmed you in "sexual acts on yourself" or that supposedly compromising content was found on your hard drive. The security of your files and their privacy should be of some value to you, and you could counteract publication by transferring money.
Information can be found in the SWR-Archiv:
Polizei warnt vor Sex-Erpressung per E-Mail.
Or at the Verbraucherzentrale:
Erpressung per E-Mail: Angeblich Porno geguckt und Kamera gehackt.
This is how you should react:
If you receive a blackmail mail, do not go into any case on the claims and open any attachments or click on any links!
Do not answer the blackmailer!
Since it is formally a criminal offense, you can file a complaint with the police. But a successful search is usually not possible because the authors of the mails are abroad and are not tangible. These types of mails are currently so immense that the authorities are flooded with ads.
It is now recommended to view these mails as SPAM or spoofing emails and delete them immediately.
Malware on the PC?! - What now?
If you have accidentally downloaded malicious software by clicking on an attachment or link, so-called ransomware and should be blackmailed, there is help on the website of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt):
Internetwache der Polizei Baden-Württemberg:
https://www.polizei-bw.de/internetwache_formular/
