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Category: Email

IT solutions: Email attachment size limits, file-upload time

Posted on by IT Help Desk

Have you ever wondered if you were the only person on campus with a particular computer problem? Got a quick technology question and don’t know who to call? Contact the IT Help Desk, 785-532-7722, e-mail helpdesk@k-state.edu.

Next topic: “How to share files that are too large to attach to emails“

Question:  I am trying to send an attachment to my email in Zimbra webmail. What is the limit on the file size?

IT Help Desk:  The limit for each email in K-State’s Zimbra system is 50MB (megabytes) including attachments.  That’s 51,200KB (kilobytes); 1 megabyte = 1,024 kilobytes. That is substantially more than most email service providers allow (typically 10-25MB).  So, when you are considering sending a large file attachment, first check the file size.

This does not take into consideration that a file attachment needs to be encoded — which typically adds roughly 30 percent to the file size.  That means the upper limit for a file attachment(s) is closer to 35MB.  It depends on the content of the attachment.

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Dangerous phishing scam hits K-Staters' e-mail

Posted on by Harvard Townsend (harv@ksu.edu)

Many K-Staters received a spear phishing scam e-mail on Monday that is particularly dangerous because it seems to refer to upcoming changes in K-State’s e-mail; appears to be from K-State’s IT Help Desk; and asks for your K-State eID and password. The criminals responsible for these scams have obviously done their homework to make the message appear legitimate. But it is not — it is a scam that is trying to steal your eID password and use it to log in to your Webmail account and use it to spam.

As always, though, you can remember this one simple rule and be safe from this type of scam: K-State IT support staff will NEVER ask for your password in an e-mail!

To help you recognize this and other scams like it, the headers of the scam message are:

From: “ITS Help Desk” <helpdesk@ksu.edu>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2010 6:49:32 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: Scheduled Service Maintenance

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Malicious e-mails strike again; 130+ computers compromised

Posted on by Harvard Townsend (harv@ksu.edu)

One thing I’ll say about hackers is they are persistent, and I guess that fact shouldn’t surprise me since the same ol’ tricks reap dividends. Last Thursday, Nov. 5, K-State was hit with a cyberattack nearly identical to one that wreaked havoc on campus last July and, like last summer, it succeeded in compromising more than 130 campus computers.

The attack consisted of four different e-mails that tried to trick people into opening a malicious .zip attachment. Users who opened the attachment instantly infected their computer with a new variant of malware that antivirus software did not detect. The compromised computers were then used to try to infect other computers by sending the same malicious e-mails to addresses harvested from local addressbooks on the infected computers.

Once again, the best solution for preventing these types of attacks is for you, the user, to be suspicious of any unexpected e-mail from unknown sources and do not open an attachment until you confirm its legitimacy. One troubling thing is the four e-mails were virtually identical to the ones from last summer, with the following four subject lines:

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