The following email was sent to faculty from Jason Pursian, CALS information security officer and associate IT director, on Mar. 31.

CALS Faculty,

The Office of Cybersecurity and the mail team are aware of an ongoing email scam campaign targeting primarily faculty members.

The emails typically come from a Gmail address often looking to engage with the faculty member through flattery, such as questions about recently published work or advice for a relative interested in the field, in an attempt to build trust. The messages do not contain links or attachments but will often progress to communication off UW-Madison platforms. The goal of the scam is to eventually convince the victim to transfer funds or cryptocurrency.

Due to the challenges with blocking this type of communication, we believe heightened awareness is important to identifying and reporting these incidents.

Additional information on a scam alert is posted here.

Those receiving the messages are encouraged to use the Report-Suspicious function in their email client. Anyone who may have lost funds should also report the scam to local law enforcement and file a complaint with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions (DFI). More info can be found here.

Any questions can be directed to cybersecurity@wisc.edu or the CALS IT team at helpdesk@cals.wisc.edu.

Jason

Jason Pursian, CISSP
Information Security Officer and Associate IT Director
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison