Earlier this week, variants of the blue button phishing email scam were circulated and unfortunately a number of accounts have been compromised as a result. Subsequently, user details including username and password were harvested. In this instance the attacker did not use the harvested details until this afternoon, when it emerged that a number of students were locked out of their accounts.
In response to the previous attack, IS implemented an automated protection mechanism which acts by immediately disabling affected accounts and diverts all suspicious email traffic from those accounts into a security vault.
At the time of writing 85 user accounts have been locked and circa 3000 malicious emails have been quarantined.
If you find you are unable to login to your university account, please go to https://portal.stir.ac.uk/discovery and follow the on screen instructions to reset your account and SET A DIFFERENT PASSWORD. It’s essential that you set a different password – failure to do so will result in your account being immediately disabled again.
Please note: it may take up to 10 minutes for your email account to start working again after you’ve reset your password.
If you are unable to reset your password, please contact the Information Centre.
Information Centre
01786 467250
information.centre@stir.ac.uk