November 2024 - PRG-staff

Seminar

by Riesen, Kaspar (INF)

Reminder: Today is Seminar

5 months, 1 week

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My holidays

by Bettina Choffat

Dear all I would like to inform / remind you that I am only working this week and next. From December 8th I will be on vacation until almost the end of the year. If you still have a concern that needs to be dealt with in 2024, please let me know as soon as possible. Best wishes Bettina -- Institut für Informatik Neubrückstrasse 10 CH-3012 Bern +41 31 684 84 26

5 months, 2 weeks

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Fwd: [sira-news] Beware of a Social Engineering Scam, targeted for Research Groups

by Riesen, Kaspar (INF)

Please be cautious :-) Anfang der weitergeleiteten Nachricht: Von: christian.tschudin(a)unibas.ch Betreff: [sira-news] Beware of a Social Engineering Scam, targeted for Research Groups Datum: 11. November 2024 um 08:32:37 MEZ An: sira-news(a)list.inf.unibe.ch Dear all, last week our Department was subject to a sophisticated social engineering attack that successfully managed to hoax three employees. It resulted in the damage of several thousands CHF. Please warn your collaborators. It starts by a semi-aggresively looking email with the subject "Urgent Action Required" sent on behalf of a PI, addressed to the first name of a collaborator: Dear X I'm contacting you to handle a short assignment right now. I would welcome your support and urgency. I hope you can help and look forward to your response. Best Regards Dr. Y Head & Professor, Z Group, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science P.S: Send me your WhatsApp phone number The scam exploits the power relationship between PhDs/PostDocs and their supervisor. The scammer carefully extracted all names and photos from our Web site, probably weeks ago, in order to create the following attack vector: The collaborator, after sending back the phone number via email, will receive a contact request in WhatsApp where the photo of the PI is shown. In a clever dialogue, the collaborator is steered towards buying physical Apple Gift Cards whose validity is verified online, all while using WhatsApp. It goes without saying that the cards are redeemed immediately. Requests for talking on the phone are dismissed ("I'm busy and in a meeting right now"). Unfortunately, most email clients as well as WhatsApp, hide the true sender addresses and you only see the sender's Display Name. The email sender was <mimiadacharles(a)mail.com<mailto:mimiadacharles@mail.com>> and the phone number used behind WhatsApp is a German one. Three grad students and Postdocs fell for the attack and, although hesitant, did not cross-verify because it would seem impolite to ask the supervisor "are your really X?", it would also introduce delay into the urgent request handling. Thanks, Christian Tschudin

5 months, 4 weeks

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Bachelor/Master Projects

by Riesen, Kaspar (INF)

Hi! I'm currently being flooded with requests for bachelor theses. Please update the information on our website with your published works. Remove topics that have already been selected and add new topics instead. For example, you can offer unselected seminar topics as bachelor theses (other ideas are highly welcome). Please send the necessary information directly to Anthony by the end of next week so that he can update the list. Thanks! Kaspar ------------------------------------------------------- PD Dr. Kaspar Riesen Head of the Pattern Recognition Group Institute of Computer Science Faculty of Science University of Bern, Switzerland kaspar.riesen(a)unibe.ch -------------------------------------------------------

6 months

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2025

2024

2023

PRG-staff November 2024