concerning a new computer virus

[Jeff ALLEN]

At 06:33 13/03/99 -0800, Catherine Crain-Thoreson wrote:
>I am amazed that this hoax keeps going around and around, though it does
>change a little.  Last year, it was Microsoft who supposedly endorsed it,
>now it's supposedly IBM.  It is *impossible* for an email message to erase
>your hard drive.  

Exactly.  All of the "Good times", "Trojan Horse", etc virus warnings are
hoaxes, that means they are fake.  All you need to do is spend 2 minutes 
going to AltaVista and search on "virus hoax" "urban legend" and check the 
first 5 sites to find lists of valid information on which viruses are real
and which
are false.

>My department has warned us that there are some new
>viruses that you have to watch out for in attachments to email messages,
>though. What I've been told is not to open an email with an attachment
>unless you know the sender.  Perhaps I'll find out that this is this an
>urban legend as well -- 

Actually, this is quite true and is a more recent phenomenon.  The real
Happy99.exe virus has been travelling over the Internet, including via
discussion lists, since January 99.  I received 2 copies of it last week,
including one via a list.   It is a real virus, and is fairly easy to remove.
However, it crashes listservers quite well.


>Always be wary of any message that says "very important -- forward to
>everyone you know," it is the recipe for SPAM.

Exactly.  In all messages that I send on the topic of virus warnings and
hoaxes, I clearly indicate that one should get informed about real viruses 
and virus hoaxes BEFORE ever sending out a message to the public.

I have changed jobs recently (was in the School of Computer Science at 
Carnegie Mellon University up until 1 December 98), so I do not have 
access to all of my standard reply messages on this topic.  Like I said
earlier in this message, just use a search engine to look up "virus hoax"
and "urban legend".  I believe one of the first five sites is the National
Computer Security Association in the US.  The information they provide
is authoritative.

Best,

Jeff Allen


=================================================
Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)  &
European Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) 
(Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013   Paris   FRANCE
Tel: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.30
mailto:jeff at elda.fr
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html