Our apologies to those of you who have recently tried to enter comments on Intercom stories -- only to find that it doesn't work. Unfortunately, we have had to disable this feature because of a security concern.
A few weeks ago, hackers discovered a "security hole" in the software that is the basis of Intercom (as well as hundreds of other websites), and left bogus text and links in the comment fields of the legitimate stories on the site.
Deleting these spurious comments and disabling the comment feature of Intercom eliminated the system's vulnerability to this intrusion. However, a permanent solution to the problem requires an upgrade and reconfiguration of the underlying software -- a process that takes a bit of time. Currently, we're hoping to be able to roll out the new Intercom for the beginning of the fall semester.
In the meantime, we still invite you to make comments on what you read in Intercom; you can simply contribute a story with your comments. Log in (with your e-mail user name and password), click on "contribute a story," and have at it!
If you'd rather that only members of the IC community be able to read what you contribute, you can use one of the new sections -- "Community Connections" or "Among Friends" -- which are only available to logged-in IC employees. The Community Connections section is intended for information about involvements that IC people have in the wider community. And, in the Among Friends section, anything goes that would be reasonable to share among friends -- personal milestones, births, weddings, significant achievements outside work, complaints or suggestions about Intercom, comments on what others have written, etc.
It's the IC community information center.
Contributed by Andrejs Ozolins
