Tens of thousands of students and staff at a university in Germany had to queue up this week after a malware infection on its campus network forced the college to reset everyone's account passwords.
The Justus Liebig University Gießen (JLU) says that a "suspected cyber attack" this month has caused it to shut down most of its online services for several days, and reset their logins.
In order to get new credentials, the school is requiring students to appear in person, meaning some 38,000 people have to show up with identification to get their passwords changed. Here's what that looks like...
"For security reasons, the university computing center has issued new passwords for all 38,000 JLU email accounts," a translation of the uni's alert reads. "All employees and students have to collect their new personal password personally."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday December 20 2019, @01:14AM (1 child)
Especially at the Gießen password office.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @04:35AM
I think he is going for a pun here, as "gießen" means "to pour".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday December 20 2019, @01:18AM
It's gonna take me an hour to change my password from password to password1?
Cuz I guarantee, 90% of those suckers did something similar.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Username on Friday December 20 2019, @01:26AM
Are they doing top secret government work there where they cannot afford a hillary clinton? Just reset all accounts to the same password and let them change passwords when they next login. If someone changes someone elses password, then do the ID thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @01:38AM (8 children)
Always doing the things the way they should be done!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @02:38AM (6 children)
In the meantime the students will just use their gmail accounts like usual...because the email from the U sucks.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 20 2019, @02:48AM (5 children)
They won't get any email from the Uni anyway, unless the Uni have a special contract with Google that don't track the email addresses it uses.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @03:19AM (2 children)
> that don't track the email addresses it uses.
Who does "it" refer to above? For a smart guy this post is very confusing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 20 2019, @03:51AM (1 child)
Intention was along the line: "unless the contract between Google and the Uni has strict privacy provision for the users benefiting from the contracted service - including the no-tracking"
(sorta: "it" == "contract")
At 42C, even in an A/C office, smart guys may no longer be that smart.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @05:08AM
Thank you for the clarification. I guess in Europe some entities give privacy a more than lip service.
Sorry to hear about your heatwave, here it's 10F/-12C so heatstroke didn't occur to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @05:46AM (1 child)
Our university supposedly has a contract with Google that supposedly restricts how much they can mine the students' data. No idea on how reliable that contract is, since I suppose they just wanted to get rid of their own email people. It seems that all universities have dropped email service in exchange for Google and Micro$oft providing it for them. Yes, many students were already using gmail before.
As for not using the university accounts, that won't go very far when one needs to pull an article or get an ebook.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 20 2019, @05:57AM
Germany.
You know? Europe? Those guys that went Nazi over privacy.
More important: the guys who are just waiting to fleece Google and the rest some more billions in fines.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Friday December 20 2019, @09:29AM
Uh huh.
What part of this were they doing right?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday December 20 2019, @03:42AM (2 children)
....probably a Windows attack vector?
What's your TCO now?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @04:38AM (1 child)
Nobody ever got fired for buying Micro$oft.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday December 20 2019, @11:35PM
at least nobody important enough to matter.
I'm sure some of the IT crew, the ones who advocated NOT using MS software, got their walking papers with a NDA clause on their final pay check to keep them from talking to anyone about it,
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:46PM
fucking windows users