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Possible new virus
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Subject: Possible new virus From: GUEST,Al Date: 02 Feb 00 - 10:47 PM I dunno if all this is true, it came from a reliable source - I will try to check it out in the morning. And just in case, I copied the original to the clipboard, created a Word document then recopied it to my clipboard before sending it on. Subject: virus Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:46:24 -0600 PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU HAVE AN E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR. If you receive an email titled "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus" DO NOT OPEN IT. It will erase everything on your hard drive. This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa," and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. Pass this warning along to EVERYONE in your address book and please share it with all your online friends ASAP so that this threat may be stopped. Please practice cautionary measures and tell anyone that may have access to your computer. Forward this warning to everyone that might access the Internet. Joyce L. Bober IBM Information Systems Pittsburgh Mailing Systems 412/922-8744 412/937-1730 Fax
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Ebbie Date: 02 Feb 00 - 11:27 PM Hey, if this is a legitimate warning- please attach the cited messages from IBM and AOL along with names and email addresses! It is NOT credible otherwise. Ebbie |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Amos Date: 02 Feb 00 - 11:28 PM I believe this is another spoof or hoax virus warning. These work is by consuming tons of user hours in being passed around on a wave of human anxiety. At least I've heard of the alleged mail header before. There are sites on the net where you can find lists of hoaxes known to be in circulation, and you should look this one up there before circulating it. I am sorry I do not have the URL to hand, but a search engine on hoaxes +virus should locate one or two of them. A |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 02 Feb 00 - 11:54 PM Dear A1, Welcome
I welcomed you also in another thread....regarding "net-identities" It appears you are "new" to a lot things beside the MudCat.
I enjoy virus, have collected a few benign ones through the years. They are fun to examine. However, you are giving knee jerk to reaction to some of the older (last 15 months) hoaxs on the net.
If it ain't about MUSIC.... please consider twice about making a posting as a "NEW THREAD." In the meantime, have fun visiting a couple of my favorite sites....there are easily a couple of hours of "good education" wrapped up in these locations.
a href=http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACFeatures.html>Computer Incident Advisery - United States - Department of Engergy
Have Fun....enjoy the MudCat......be paranoid......but also install a good fresh virus-alert "so you don't sweat the small stuff.
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 02 Feb 00 - 11:56 PM Dear A1, Welcome
I welcomed you also in another thread....regarding "net-identities" It appears you are "new" to a lot things beside the MudCat.
I enjoy virus, have collected a few benign ones through the years. They are fun to examine. However, you are giving knee jerk to reaction to some of the older (last 15 months) hoaxs on the net.
If it ain't about MUSIC.... please consider twice about making a posting as a "NEW THREAD." In the meantime, have fun visiting a couple of my favorite sites....there are easily a couple of hours of "good education" wrapped up in these locations.
Computer Incident Advisery - United States - Department of Energy
Have Fun....enjoy the MudCat......be paranoid......but also install a good fresh virus-alert "so you don't sweat the small stuff.
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Escamillo Date: 03 Feb 00 - 12:10 AM Credibility 99.99% : No e-mail can damage your computer by just being displayed on your screen. Credibility 99.99% : Invitations to RUN Attachments to e-mail can activate viruses and destroy your files Credibility 0.00% : Generous people trying to save you from disaster make abuse and encourages you to make abuse of the mail servers in the net. As a rule, please ignore all virus warnings and humanitarian campaigns and do not re-distribute them. In case of doubt, investigate the phone numbers they give, as I did several times, and you'll find that they are absolutely false. Un abrazo - Andrés |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: katlaughing Date: 03 Feb 00 - 12:17 AM Hey, Al, at least you tried, huh, but Andres is right. I received the exactly worded message earlier this week, only the subject line was different. It was suspiciously worded exactly like another I received a couple of months ago, from an overly diligent cousin. Get yourself Norton Antivirus, available online, and next time you get one these just hit delete. Thanks for the effort. The majority of Mudcatters do not mind that you started a thread about this. Welcome to the Mudcat, katlaughing |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: GUEST,Al Date: 03 Feb 00 - 12:39 AM As I said, I will call the phone # listed in the morning. I am aware that hoaxes exist. If it doesn't pan out -I'll be glad to post a retraction. Only trying to help. I have Macaffee. "Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean that there's nobody trying to get you" - maybe someone has the correct verbiage of the quote and the author. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Banjer Date: 03 Feb 00 - 06:41 AM As kat said in her post, I for one am glad that someone cares enough to take the time to alert others to possible problems in our computers. Thanks, Al, I would rather be notified even if it was a hoax. What if it had been real and no one thought it important enough to spread the word? What better place than in public forum? |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 03 Feb 00 - 07:40 AM A1--I vaguely remember a quote from several years ago when a lot of football coaches were being fired. It went something like this. "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you." |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Áine Date: 03 Feb 00 - 09:34 AM Thanks for well-meaning thread, A1, but I agree with the others that say 'check it out first'. If, after that, there is a possibility in your mind that the virus could be real, please feel free to post a warning and/or question thread. I've appreciated the threads posted here before that told of *false* virus alerts; so, if you know of a phony virus alert that's circulating, please share that with us, too. -- Áine |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: MMario Date: 03 Feb 00 - 09:44 AM The warning is indeed a hoax. the following url is a good site to check these things out. http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: GUEST,Al Date: 03 Feb 00 - 09:49 AM As I promised, I called the phone # posted. The person is real, the company is real, the virus is not. My appologies. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Escamillo Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:02 PM May be that another nasty intention of the hoaxer is to harass one person's or company's phone lines with several thousand calls for verification. This happened too with a recent humanitarian campaign for a young cancer patient, and the victim was the American Cancer Society. Yet another trick: when they ask you to send a copy to some particular address, promising that somebody will make a small donation for each mail received, they are only gathering authentic e-mail addresses from everywhere, to feed huge lists of e-mails for sale. There are many holes in the law, I think. Un abrazo - Andrés
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Blackcat2 Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:24 PM Greetings National Public Radio did have a blurb this morning about new "virus" thingies on the Net. - It seems that hackers are creating Weblinks that can get into your computer when you click on them and do things like access your credit card info and stuff. pax yall |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Kernow John Date: 03 Feb 00 - 04:09 PM Thanks for the info Al Baz |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: fulurum Date: 03 Feb 00 - 04:58 PM the recent one that was the message but difeerent name was wiggle worm or somthing to that effect. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 03 Feb 00 - 05:40 PM The basic rule is, don't open any attachment from someone you don't trust. Even if it's signed as coming from someone you trust, check the address on the email, or send an email to them, if its different from the one yiou have on record. And any time you send an email with an attachment, tell them what the attachment is, rather than "you might like this". I reckon Al's warning probably is a hoax (on him, not by him), but if anything arrives in my mail saying "It takes Guts to say Jesus", I'm not opening it. And God knows I wouldn't open it even apart from the warning. It's disrespectful. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 04 Feb 00 - 01:27 AM Now if your E-Mail had read...
Two thirds of the Mudcat Community would have known its validity.
follow my threads above .... the education is fun and legit. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Brendy Date: 04 Feb 00 - 02:47 AM Do you honestly keep viruses as pets? Amazing man. How do you do that? I ask this in all seriousness, as (being one who dabbles with other unknowns) I would like to be able to study them a bit - find out how they work etc. Follow the links above, I suppose? B. |
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Subject: RE: Possible new virus From: Sourdough Date: 04 Feb 00 - 03:48 AM I've tried explaining to many well-meaning people why sending on "Forward to as many people as you can" messages is not a good thing to do. Then I read this article. By Elizabeth Weise USA TODAY Tuesday, January 18, 2000 A rule to live by in the age of the Internet: Never forward any e-mail that contains the sentence, "PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN." Because if you do, there's a very good chance bad things will happen to you. Not bad as in "the last person who broke the chain was killed in a freak roller-coaster accident." Bad as in having your cell phone explode with hundreds of calls a day. Bad as in having your name, address and phone number preserved forever in the amberlike stickiness that is an Internet hoax. Or just having everyone you know think you're an idiot. We're talking hoaxes here. Those stupid, many-times-forwarded e-mail messages that involve fast money, absurd claims or just about anything to do with Microsoft. The ones where you always wonder, "Who in the world believes this stuff enough to actually pass this along?" Well, now I know. First came a copy of the infamous "Chicken memo." That's the one that claims -- according to a study supposedly done by the University of New Hampshire -- that Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change its name to KFC because it no longer uses real chicken meat, but genetically engineered organisms cultured from chicken cells and grown in vats. It's so silly that I was still giggling when I called the folks at UNH. They weren't laughing. Their phones were lighting up like Christmas trees with people calling to find out more about this "horrible story." Computer specialist Jim Cerny finally put up a link on the university's main Web page on "The Chicken Hoax," and he says it's getting 10,000 hits a day. But at least that wasn't as bad as the poor woman I'll just call "Mary" at the Massachusetts environmental police. She forwarded an early incarnation of the message and in doing so attached her work signature file to it -- which included her full name and both of her work numbers. As the message spread, so did her name and phone number. That resulted in an avalanche of calls to the beleaguered state agency. "It's been crazy," said her supervisor, who declined to give her name or tell me whether "Mary" will still be working there next week. Then on Wednesday I was sent the Microsoft one (you know, "Forward this message and Microsoft will send you $245 for everyone who forwards it on.") It came from a friend back East with the note "I find this hard to believe but maybe worth a try -- it came from one of the most famous Kant scholars in the world, so what does that tell you?" This friend is nobody's fool. She's a serious intellectual who discusses things over lunch that would take me weeks to even begin to understand. But a stray e-mail promising easy money seemed, if only for a moment, plausible to her. Which got me wondering -- who are those people in the multiple headers that make up the bulk of these hoax messages? Printed out in a small font, the e-mail took up 12 pages. I got out my highlighter and started doing some archaeological work. The first name that popped up on Dec. 16 was the chairman and CEO of a fairly important company in Montreal. He didn't appear to have originated the message, but, unfortunately for him, when he forwarded it, his signature file (containing his full name, title, address and phone numbers) was appended to the message.I called his office and got his secretary, who immediately asked, "Are you calling about that e-mail?" in a more than harried tone. When I identified myself, she sighed a heavy sigh and said, "He's getting zillions of calls. I don't know how it happened; he doesn't either. It's a disaster." The next layer came from Montreal Internet strategist and computer consultant Kathy Silverstein on Dec. 17 at 12:11 p.m. Slammed is the only possible word to describe what has happened to her since that fateful moment when she hit the Send key. She was, she told me, "temporarily insane. I know better, but I said, 'What the hell, I'll give everyone a laugh.' " So she sent it along -- to all 300 people in her address book. Ten minutes later, her cell phone started to ring, and e-mail began pouring into her mailbox. It hasn't stopped. While we were talking, the call waiting on her phone clicked in two or three times a minute. "It's crippling my business," she says. Next, the message bounced to ATT.net, then to an AOL address on Dec. 17. That person sent it along to six others on Saturday, the 18th. For a few days it looked as if it might have died out, but on Wednesday, the 22nd, another AOL user shipped it off, starting the chain up again. On the 23rd, it hit the @Home network, where it again almost died out. But not quite. On New Year's Eve someone else at AOL sent it out again, and this time it hit a mailbox at the philosophy department at the State University of New York. From there it went to the department's graduate and faculty mailing list. And in a fit of collegial madness, the contagion was passed on to what looks like the better part of the faculty at New York University. On the 3rd, it left the keyboard of one of America's most distinguished ethicists, with a note saying, "Apparently this is legitimate. They will pay you money if you forward this. Please do so." They won't, but that didn't stop it from going on to staffers at Princeton, the University of Chicago, Barnard, Rutgers and Dartmouth and to Jules L. Coleman, the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld professor of jurisprudence, who on Jan. 4 sent it to "the longest address book I had." "My point was I wanted people to see just how many incredibly smart people were prepared, while even mentioning their skepticism, to send it along and encourage others to do so," Coleman says. These were some of the leading philosophers in America, skeptics for whom the existence of an external world is an open question. But that didn't stop them from forwarding the message. "We may be skeptical about many things -- but not about free money," Coleman says. Brilliant people may lose all objectivity when confronted with the lure of free money when it comes cloaked in a facile bit of writing over the Internet. But the lesson here is that anyone with some street smarts can strike a blow for Truth, Justice and a Less-Clogged Internet by just being a little smarter. And not hitting the Forward key. |
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