News

• DFCI Computer Hacked (3/10/01)
• Do you have a Cable Modem? Would you like a VPN Connection to DFCI? Are you willing to engage in a "do-it-yourself" project? If the answer to these questions is YES, then request a VPN form and software from Matthew Temple. Ben Weng has written a document explaining how to connect to your H: drive from home. (3/7/01)
• Microsoft Operating System Chief, Jim Allchin says Linux Threatens Innovation (2/16/01)
• DNAStar Available for download and general use.
  See item on the Tech Support page (2/1/01)
• New Inside the Institute (1/29/01)
• Problems with Macintosh backups. Affected are Mac users whose computers get their address via DHCP and whose computers are backed up to our tape library by Retrospect (1/13/01)
  

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  As a result of an as-yet-unresolved network problem, normal backups of MACS are not occuring. We will notify as soon as a fix is in. Until then, Macintosh users who are being backed up by Chik to our tape library should make copies of any critical documents created/modified since and put on zip disks or one of the Research computing file servers if you have an account. The hoped-for fix mentioned below did NOT fix the problem.

• New Macintosh Outlook Public Beta has been released. http://www.microsoft.com/mac/outlook/outlook_prod.asp Outlook 2001 for Mac Beta Available. (01/10/01) Propoganda below:

  ...Outlook 2001 is the only Macintosh-based application that both fully utilizes the Macintosh platform and provides seamless interoperability with the millions of customers using Microsoft Outlook today. With Outlook 2001, Macintosh customers will have the ability to easily and seamlessly communicate and share contacts, schedules, tasks and more with other users of Outlook on either the Windows(r) operating system or the Macintosh. The final version of Outlook 2001 for Mac is expected to be broadly available in the summer of 2001.

• Join the Genomics Club mailing list at Dana Farber. We hope this list will become a discussion forum for genomics-related issues here. Looking for people with experience using some particular software? Hardware? Dr. Kornelia Polyak will be mailing notification of related lectures and through this list as well.
  To join, send an email to "genomicsclub-subscribe@research.dfci.harvard.edu"
  We also have a list of mailing lists (1/4/01)
• Join the Bioinformatics User Group Mailing List (BUG) at Harvard Medical School. The header from their mailing list says:

  This is a community of people interested in sharing experiences related to bioinformatics.
  Please feel free to pose questions or comments to the mailing list on this topic

  To join, send an email to "BUG@HMS.HARVARD.EDU" with the word "subscribe" on a line by itself in the body of the message. (1/4/01)

• Li Cai has joined the Research Computing Group. He comes to us from Connie Cepko's lab in the Genetics Department of HMS. Li is an Md/PhD, a biologist who is familiar with expression analysis software, can help you get started with your web site, knows Linux, etc. Please welcome him. (His web page can be seen at "http://research.dfci.harvard.edu/lcai"(12/30/00)
• Research Cores Fair, Wednesday November 29, Smith Bldg, Rm. 308. (11/21/00)
• Shutdown of Appletalk zones in Smith Bldg, Fri. Dec 1. (11/27/00)
• DFCI Scientific Report 2000 on Line (11/21/00)
• Pediatric / Oncology web pages now hosted at http://research.dfci.harvard.edu/pedonc (11/21/00)
• Myles Brown Lab web pages now hosted at http://research.dfci.harvard.edu/brownlab (11/10/00)
• Our Links to Partners Services not available outside of DFCI/Partners will now indicate that they are unavailable to the outside world. (10/31/00)
• eJournals(ScienceDirect) Electronic journals now available to the DFCI community from MGH Treadwell / Bennaceref Libraries. For further information, please contact Christine Fleuriel, director of the Benacerraf Library (10/31/00)
• What has Research Computing been up to recently(10/25/00)

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HACKED 3/10/01

Though not the first time, one of our computers was hacked, and damage was caused. When Paul Morrison, who runs the High-Throughput Sequencing Core at DFCI, came back from a conference in San Diego, he found that his ABI 3100 sequencer had been hacked and was being used as an FTP distribution site for several DVD movies. Unlike all previous instances of hacking this writer has seen in the Medical Area, this was a destructive hack. Data files and programs were deleted. Fortunately, all files were backed up and ABI will be in to restore the machine to its pristine state.

This event has led me to re-evaluate the general state of access through our firewalls here at DFCI. (As a short digression, any computer that connects to a service over the internet, connects on a numbered port. For example, web browsers connect, normally, on port 80.) Right now, several ports on our research subnets are generally open to the outside world -- ftp, http, and gopher, in particular. On some subnets, as a result of historical decisions, other ports are open.

Over the next week or two, I'll be working with Chuck Riley from Partners Networking to close these open ports except for machines that specifically request open ports. For machines requesting open ports, we'd like someone from Research Computing to verify that reasonable security measures have been taken.

It should be noted that other machines (red.dfci.harvard.edu and research.dfci.harvard.edu) have had intruders as well. In all of these cases, the intruder seems to have exploited FTP weaknessness. All of the changes mentioned here are in advance of new firewall software that will be implemented in the next couple of months establishing "zones of trust," etc.

One thing that you should know is this -- if any multiuser computer (Unix, NT) is compromised ANYWHERE in the Partners/DFCI domain, it is a potential threat to other computers. You should become familiar with the idea of "Services" offered by your computer and turn off those you don't need

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Matthew Temple (Matthew_Temple@research.dfci.harvard.edu)