As most of you know by now, ISU Extension has signed a contract with ICN to install broadband capabilities in field offices. Specifics will be coming, but here is a general outline of what will be happening in the next five to six months:

The schedule for installing offices will be finalized and distributed before December 25th

• All county offices were contacted in the last 45 days to find out the location for installing the new broadband equipment
  
• The installation schedule is based on a number of factors including: area priorities, geographical distribution, and planned office moves, as well as coordinating schedules with ICN.

• There will be up to three sets of installers visiting your office (your local telecom, ICN, and ISU Extension IT)
  
• The actual changeover to the new network will happen when the ISU Extension IT staff visit your office (the other visits are to perform initial setup)
  
• No changes to the setup of your current machine will be necessary to operate on the new network

If you have questions, contact Floyd Davenport at floyd@iastate.edu or via phone at 515-294-8658

Earlier this morning a new variant of the Mimail virus began circulating. For a short time the virus was not being caught by the campus antivirus filters, and several staff received infected attachments. Do not open these attachments; delete them from your system.

The mass-mailing virus arrives in a message with a subject such as "YOUR PAYPAL.COM ACCOUNT EXPIRES", and attempts to obtain credit card information via social engineering.

If you opened the attachment, you are infected and your computer is attempting to spread the virus. You should immediately clean your PC with NAI's Stinger utility.

After disinfecting, you should update VirusScan. To update, right-click the VirusScan shield in the lower right corner of your screen. Select 'Update now...'.

As always, you should not open any email attachments from people you do not know or are not expecting. In particular, do not open attachments with the extensions .pif, .scr, .vbs, or .exe.

More information on the W32/Mimail.i@MM (Paypal) virus can be found at NAI's web site:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100822.htm