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SALT LAKE CITY — The University of Utah on Monday warned faculty, staff and students to be wary of scammers who pretend to be from the school’s help desk or technical support team to gain access to computers.
The reminder was sent out to the campus community via email after a number of people reported receiving unsolicited calls from people who identified themselves as being with the university, according to U. Chief Information Security Officer Dan Bowden. He said the scammers asked if the person was experiencing computer problems and then instructed them to give them remote computer access.
“We sent out the caution to remind (the community) to watch out because we don’t only want to protect the university data — I’d hate to see any of our staff or faculty or students experience a personal loss because someone got access to their home PC and either took data or used financial information,” he said.
These attacks wouldn't happen if there wasn't some degree of success behind them.
–Dan Bowden
These types of phishing or social engineering attacks are common, but having scammers pose as U. support staff is a more recent development, according to Bowden. He said university support staff will never make unsolicited calls to individuals to work on their computer.
Those who contacted the department recognized the calls as a scam, but the school decided to send a warning email to everyone because Bowden said for every person who called in, there were probably others who received similar calls and didn’t report it.
“These attacks wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t some degree of success behind them,” he said. “The attacks nowadays are so sophisticated and the attackers are doing such a good job of basically impersonating whoever they’re trying to represent that they’re obviously making some money on it, because they’re spending more time and money in building these attacks.”
Scammers use public records and other information on the Internet to target the people they call, according to Bowden. He said personal phone numbers were collected from non-university sources.
Those with the university who have received similar calls should call the main campus help desk at 801-581-4000 opt. 1, or the hospital and health sciences help desk at 801-587-6000.
