We would like to reassure everyone, mitigations were put in place for all Informatics managed systems on Wednesday evening as soon as this became public.
We would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that you MUST NOT attempt to run any potential exploit code on University systems or in anyway attempt to acquire elevated privileges to which you are not entitled. This is potentially a very serious breach of the University Computing Acceptable Use Policy.
We are very closely monitoring this situation, we will be aware if any accounts attempt to abuse this exploit. If we deem the risk is significant enough, we will block all access an account immediately without warning. We will also pass the information over to our colleagues in IS so that UoE accounts may also be disabled.
We’re aware that we have many staff and students who study or do research on IT security. For anyone wanting to satisfy their own intellectual curiousity, please investigate exploits on your own isolated personal devices.
]]>Deleted Items” mail folder will now be permanently deleted after 90 days.
This is the restoration of the previous behaviour of the “Deleted Items” folder, but for some reason has not been implemented for the past few years.
For more details on this change, see the Information Services FAQ:
Neil
Services Unit
Scope: Wired connections in offices will be affected. WiFi, phones and doors will not be affected.
This is being done to ensure the security, reliability, and modernity of our network.
On each site, we will be going one floor at a time. An “at risk of interruption” window for the floor will be updated in this blogpost. When work is complete, the window will be closed, and the blogpost updated once more.
While, at the early stages of the upgrade, the “at risk of interruption” window may be large (hours/days/weeks), the expected downtime should be of the order of minutes/seconds.
As the upgrade process becomes more streamlined, these windows will be refined to be shorter and more predictable, while maintaining generous notice periods.
All updates – interruptions, floor completions, timelines, will be kept up-to-date in this blogpost. Please refer to it to see when you may be at risk of a connectivity interruption.
Schedules below:
| Floor | Status | Starting No Earlier Than | At Risk (Start) | At Risk (End) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basement | Complete | 21/11/25 | 21/11/25 | 05/12/25 |
| 0 | Complete | 01/02/26 | 01/02/26 | 20/04/26 |
| 1 | Complete | 01/02/26 | 20/04/26 | 10/06/26 |
| 2 | In progress | 16/03/26 | 15/06/26 | 25/07/26 |
| 3 | In progress | 16/03/26 | TBD | TBD |
| 4 | Pending | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| 5 | Pending | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| Floor | Status | Starting No Earlier Than | At Risk (Start) | At Risk (End) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Complete | 25/11/25 | 25/11/25 | 01/03/25 |
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Details of the project can be found on the project SharePoint site
The site includes a spreadsheet outlining the changes, but for Informatics it boils down to us losing the following printers:
Informatics Forum:
Appleton Tower
This does mean that your nearest printer may well be on a floor above or below you.
The printer removals will be happening on Monday and Tuesday the 10th and 11th of November. (*) The level 4 printer will actually be removed on Thursday the 6th.
Neil
Service Unit
14/11/2025 – Update
Due to an oversight and accessibility requirements, the remaining Forum level 3 printer will be moved to level 4. Leaving the printers in the Forum being Level 1, Level 4 and Level 5. Everyone should still be within one floor’s travel of a printer.
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Two WUXGA 1920×1200 laser projectors support desktop extension and duplication. For presenting, the Sennheiser microphone system supports clear speech, and paired with the podium PC provides full remote-presentation support. A flying HDMI lead is available for you to plug in your own laptop and present from there. Audio is delivered by the Tannoy speaker system giving clear coverage across the room from either source – podium PC or laptop. The projectors, screen duplication and extension, as well as volume and source, can all be controlled from the Extron Touchpanel on the podium desk.
If you have any questions about this, please contact Computing Support via our web form.
]]>As part of the ongoing Ubuntu upgrade, we’re migrating the OpenVPN endpoints to new servers. This is also a major version upgrade and some config changes to improve security (e.g. turning off compression). This will also hopefully silence some warnings that you have been seeing with some clients.
We aim to have the old servers turned off in two weeks time (14th August 2025), so please take action now to migrate to the new service.
As part of this move, we are also requiring the use of a separate identity which is only used for OpenVPN. This reduces the exposure of your “main” DICE password, and brings us into line with other services like the IS VPN which already require a separate identity. You will need to visit our password portal to set up a new password. It cannot be the same as your DICE password.
The new config files are here:
Choose your OS and download the appropriate config file.
ACTION: Register an /ovpn identity and set a password. Download the new config file (and apply it to your client).
]]>The Linux routers are our edge (and sometimes internal) firewalls as well as providing routing between our subnets and EdLAN, and onwards to the internet. They are connected to our core switches and provide 10Gbps throughput for external traffic. We have redundant pairs at each site (plus some other backups) all of which need to be upgraded.
In order to upgrade the routers, we need to announce the school subnets in BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to EdLAN (the wider University network), and then instruct client machines to use them as their gateway. Since there is obviously a period between these two steps, there is a risk of asymmetric routing which typically upsets stateful firewalls. We have a plan to synchronise the connection tracking tables of the old and new routers so that no outage should be observed. However, like all plans, there is some risk and so we are announcing this at risk period.
If you do observe connection issues, you can resolve them by rebooting your machine, or, if you are able to do so, refresh your DHCP lease to get the address of the new router.
The next upgrade is Tuesday 10th June at 6pm. This affects the Informatics Forum.
]]>If you need any advice regarding this, please contact the computing team via our support page
Jennifer
]]>One of our researchers was involved in a major project which produced a substantial corpora of data. Our researcher felt that this corpora might prove useful in their future work but there was no funding available to find a suitable repository for the data.
Fortunately, all research staff in the University receive a free 0.5TB quota on DataStore, the central commodity storage facility. As it turned out, 0.5TB wasn’t quite enough to hold all the data but DataStore offers the facility for two or more users to combine half their quota into a joint group space. By collaborating with a couple of colleagues, the researcher was able to create a group area on DataStore where the corpora could be securely stored and accessed as required.
A researcher had data contained in a spreadsheet which they wanted to be modified and added-to by other users within the University. In addition, there was a requirement to make entering data in some cells mandatory, and to sanitise the data entered into other cells. In addition, a more user-friendly interface than the standard spreadsheet was required.
By moving the spreadsheet into the University’s Office 365 infrastructure and then creating a PowerApp using the spreadsheet as a data source, the researcher was able to allow his users to modify and add to the data using a more friendly form based interface. In addition, by setting up a suitable flow, the researcher was able to be notified by email every time a change was made to the spreadsheet.
Unfortunately the Informatics Computing Team are unable to help with the technical details of setting up such a system. We are learning how to make use of O365 too!
As part of a research project, it was necessary to allow collaborators, both internal to the university and external, to download and upload data associated with the project.
The central DataSync service proved ideal for this purpose since it is accessible both inside and outside the University and provides a convenient web based interface for uploading and downloading data. Each researcher has a fairly minimal amount of storage allocated on the DataSync servers but should more be required, as was the case here, a DataSync share can be linked to storage on the DataStore service, and provides a convenient means of sharing DataStore mounted data externally.
See the University’s Research Data Services pages for more information on managing your research data.
Thanks to those who contributed their experiences.
Craig
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Some users may be aware there is Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) option available. Please note this is only acceptable for devices owned by the University if you purchase a license. Free subscriptions to ESM are only available for personal use.
To ensure the ongoing security of your system (and the rest of the Informatics network), we recommend upgrading to a newer Ubuntu Long-Term-Support release, the latest version is “Noble Numbat” 24.04. If you are currently using “Jammy Jellyfish” 22.04, you’re fine to continue doing so until May 2027.
Over the next few weeks the computing team will be scanning the network to identify any devices still running Ubuntu Focal and contacting owners. If necessary we will disconnect devices from the network.
If you need any advice regarding this issue, please contact the computing team via our support page.
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