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Kilen Mathews Special to the Middle East Times Over the past several years I have been receiving e-mails from friends, colleagues and anonymous do-gooders (with budding False Authority Syndrome) to warn me of the viruses coming via e-mail. My favorite is the one that says something to the effect: "If you receive an e-mail message with the words GOOD TIMES in the title DO NOT OPEN IT IT WILL DESTROY your hard drive!" Many times the worried sender titles their message "warning about GOOD TIMES" creating an e-mail that fits their description of the danger! Hoax warnings are typically scare alerts started by malicious people and passed on by innocent users who think they are helping the community by spreading the warning. Part of the etiquette of using the Internet, (netiquette), includes not passing along unsubstantiated hoaxes. Even if you think you will be saving the computers of your friends and colleagues from certain disaster... check it out first. If you receive an alert about a software virus, you can be sure that all the major software anti-virus companies have heard about it first. Go to the DataFellows, McAfee or Symantec World Wide Web sites and search for up to date and authoritative information about the virus before you declare the impending doom to your friends. If you are an Internet e-mail user please read this section and help stop the hysteria spread by false alarms by: 1. Getting informed, For the full details visit: http://kumite.com/myths/myths http://www.europe.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm 2. Not passing along any rumors or warnings unless you have checked them out yourself. Note: All of the viruses mentioned below do not exist as any threat. They are hoaxes and exaggerations. If you receive e-mail warnings about them, you can safely disregard them. Please do not pass them on. Hacker Riot A common e-mail warning about hackers going on a rampage tells you to empty your mailbox and stay off the Internet all day or for a week or two! This hoax seems to circulate every Valentine's Day (14 February) and is increasing on other dates at random. Disregard and do not pass on. YUKON3U.MP JPG hoax This widespread hoax was posted to many Internet newsgroups on 23 March this year and warned of viruses that arrive via viewing pictures on the internet. This is impossible. You cannot get software viruses by downloading and viewing GIF or JPEG pictures. It also claimed that the virus would do physical damage to your computer. While this is theoretically possible, there have not been any documented cases of any virus doing hardware damage. (There is a Yukon.151 virus that has nothing to do with JPG files.) Dying of Cancer Hoax This hoax is not about viruses but is so common it bears mention. It is usually a child (usually a young girl) dying of cancer. The most recent version has the name of a little girl called Jessica Mydeck. It is not true. The American Cancer Society even has put a statement on their web site telling everyone not to believe this story. Ignore it and do not pass it on. NAUGHTY ROBOT Widespread hoax about a program (via an internet "spider") that enters via your web browser and steals your personal information such as credit cards numbers. Disregard. It doesn't happen. AOL4FREE.COM hoax The AOL4FREE hoax message was spread in e-mail in early March, 1997. It warned of an e-mail message that, when viewed, would delete all the files on your hard disk. It is a hoax and completely harmless. However, some mean-spirited programmer decided to try to catch everyone with their guards down. Another program was written and sent as an e-mail attachment. This program, when executed, did issue commands that would delete the files on the C: drive of a DOS-based PC. So there remains a danger that someone can always hide a new virus masquerading as a proven hoax. Yikes, it can be dangerous out there. GOOD TIMES hoax This one has been around for at least two years and has now recurred in several renamed versions such as Penpal Greetings, Join the Crew, PKZIP300 and Deeyenda Maddick. One version of this hoax, called Irina, was a publicity stunt gone bad (based on a character called "Irina" in a recent publication by Penguin books). All of them tell you not to open the e-mail message or it will destroy your hard disk. Utter nonsense. You cannot get a virus by simply reading an e-mail message. MATRA R-440 CROTALE An April Fools joke that has become another widespread hoax. There is no virus by this name. It claims to infect virtually any type of computer. This capability is another myth about viruses. Aside from some macro viruses (for example MS Word and Excel viruses that can attack both PCs and Macintoshes running MS products), viruses can only affect one type of operating system. THE WITCH HUNT GHOST.EXE and SHEEP.EXE and EYES.EXE are examples of exaggerations and scares made about innocent programs that have (wrongly) been accused of being viruses or trojans. All of them are cute little programs that display fun graphics. At some point they caused some false alarms on virus detection software programs. Those alarms have been passed on for years even after the software vendors published statements that these programs are harmless. MEME / ANTI-CDA hoax No virus exists with this name. Another very official looking warning often accompanies this hoax message. INDEPENDENCE hoax This was a prank, based on the movie Independence Day, which was distributed as a very official-looking alert. Space aliens affecting your computer. Give me a break. BE DIFFERENT
Don't be paraphrasing P. T. Barnum one of the suckers
"born every minute" who passes on the hoaxes
and April's fools jokes that come into your e-mail
box. And of course scan everything you download,
especially MS word documents. There are now over 1000
MS Word macro viruses. But we'll have to talk about
that another time.
Suspect a real virus threat? Need to check out a suspected
hoax? I can help; e-mail me at: kilenm@bigfoot.com.
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