Forged emails sent to CoE groups

On Tuesday, February 7, forged emails carrying messages of hate were sent to several College of Engineering email groups from an anonymous email server. The messages were “spoofed” so they appeared to come from an engineering faculty member and a doctoral student. They did not send the messages. The U-M Police Department and the FBI are conducting a joint criminal investigation into the incident. The Information Assurance group is also involved in the investigation. Email “spoofing” is the forgery of an email header so that the message appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. This is different from hacking, which involves a cyber attacker taking over an individual’s account by circumventing security systems. In this case, no one has circumvented any IT security protocols at U-M.