greeting virus

The Goodtimes Virus was a computer virus hoax that spread during the early years of the Internet's popularity. Warnings about a computer virus named "Good Times" began being passed around among Internet users in 1994. The Goodtimes virus was supposedly transmitted via an email bearing the subject header "Good Times" or "Goodtimes," hence the virus's name, and the warning recommended deleting any such email unread. The virus described in the warnings did not exist, but the warnings themselves, were, in effect, virus-like. This is a warning for all internet users - there is a dangerous virus propogating
across the internet through an e-mail message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!.

History

Email warnings about the Good Times virus first showed up on November 15, 1994. [citation needed] The first message was brief, a simple five sentence email with a holiday greeting, advising recipients not to open email messages with subject "GOOD TIMES!!", as doing so would ruin their files. Later messages became more intricate. The most common versions -- the "Infinite loop" and "ASCII buffer" editions -- were much longer, containing descriptions of what exactly Good Times would do to the computer of someone who opened it, as well as comparisons to other viruses of the time, and references to an FCC warning. D worm, which disguises itself as an e-mail holiday greeting, is currently the
most frequently detected worldwide virus, software security company Panda.

Purported effects

The longer version of the Good Times warning contained descriptions of what Good Times was capable of doing to computers. In addition to sending itself to every email address in a recipients received or sent mail, the Good Times virus caused a number of other nasty things to happen. If an infected computer contained a hard drive, it would most likely be destroyed. If Goodtimes was not stopped in time, an infected computer would enter an "nth-complexity infinite binary loop," (a meaningless term) damaging the processor. Risk Assessment - Home Users: N/A. The "ASCII" buffer email described the mechanism of Good Times as a buffer overflow.