SUBJECT:

Increase in Phishing Activity - Ransomware Shipping Fraud Emails

UC San Diego faculty, staff, and students are often the target of attempts to gain login credentials or personal information, also known as phishing. Phishing is the practice of requesting confidential information in an email that looks like it is from an institution such as a university, bank, IRS, USA or other government, law firm, the Post Office, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, eBay, PayPal or any store or social media.

There has been a recent increase in phishing attempts that refer to packages or parcel deliveries. These are known as Shipping Fraud. The language instructs the user to open an attachment. Do not open any such attachments. Please submit any such attempts to abuse@ucsd.edu.

These and others are fraudulent attempts to encrypt and/or gain access to your files, credentials or personal information. Protect yourself from these phishing attempts.
. UCSD, UCSD ITS, your bank, FedEx, the IRS, your credit card company, etc. will never send you attachments to open, nor ask for your password by email, phone, text message, or in person.
. Financial institutions will communicate with you via secure messaging. You may receive an email from a financial institution informing you of this message, but it will never ask for your personal information or password.
. Do not click on any attachments or imbedded buttons in a phishing email, especially those that say "unsubscribe" or "remove me from this mailing list." These links often install malware on your systems.

If you do accidentally click on these attachments, please immediately power your system down and contact ITS Service Desk @ 858-246-4357 or Health Sciences Customer Services @ 619-543-7474 and your local Systems Administrator. If have any questions about phishing, you can always consult your department systems administrator, ITS at postmaster@ucsd.edu, or the Health Sciences Customer Services.

Brian DeMeulle Executive Director - IT Infrastructure & Operations Acting Chief Information Security Officer UC San Diego IT Services Ken Wottge Information Security Officer UC San Diego Health Services