I am very grateful to Claire Labrecque for writing to me off-list about some news
she has heard regarding viruses and e-mail. Wisely, she didn't send this news to
the list, but only informed me in my capacity as list owner. In short, it seems
that 'Join the Crew' and 'Penpal Greetings' virus hoaxes are making the rounds,
so I thought I would pass along the following messages from the authoritative web
page,
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
(Many thanks to Mike Lacey for posting the Web page address to the list back in
May!)
Here's what the web page has to say about these two hoaxes... George
*****************
Circulating the Internet is an email message entitled "Join the Crew". For a
virus to spread, it must
be executed. Reading a mail message does not execute the mail message. Trojans
and viruses have
been found as executable attachments to mail messages, but they must be extracted
and executed to
do any harm. CIAC still affirms that reading E-mail, using typical mail agents,
can not activate
malicious code delivered in or with the message.
IMPORTANT - VIRUS Alert!!!
Take note !
Someone got an email, titled as JOIN THE CREW.
It has erased his hard drive.
Do not open up any mail that has this title.
It will erase your whole hard drive.
This is a new email virus and not a lot of people know about it,
just let everyone know, so they won't be a victim.
Please e-mail this to everyone you know!!!
Remember the title : JOIN THE CREW
Variants of this email message are circulating the Internet. If you receive an
email message entitled
"Join the Crew" and it has an attachment, CIAC recommends that you delete the
message and the
attachment. If you receive just the message, delete the message. Please DO NOT
circulate
unvalidated virus alerts.
*****************
The PENPAL GREETINGS! Hoax shown below appears to be an attempt to kill an e-mail
chain
letter by claiming that it is a self starting Trojan that destroys your hard
drive and then sends copies
of itself to everyone whose address in in your mailbox. Reading an e-mail message
does not run it
nor does it run any attachments, so this Trojan must be self starting. Aside from
the fact that a
program cannot start itself, the Trojan would also have to know about every
different kind of
e-mail program to be able to forward copies of itself to other people. This
warning is totally a hoax.
FYI!
Subject: Virus Alert
Importance: High
If anyone receives mail entitled: PENPAL GREETINGS! please delete it WITHOUT
reading it. Below is a little explanation of the message, and what it would
do to your PC if you were to read the message. If you have any questions or
concerns please contact SAF-IA Info Office on 697-5059.
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!".
DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY MESSAGE ENTITLED "PENPAL GREETINGS!"
This message appears to be a friendly letter asking you if you are
interestedin a penpal, but by the time you read this letter, it is too late.
The "trojan horse" virus will have already infected the boot sector of your
hard
drive, destroying all of the data present. It is a self-replicating virus,
and once the message is read, it will AUTOMATICALLY forward itself to anyone
who's e-mail address is present in YOUR mailbox!
This virus will DESTROY your hard drive, and holds the potential to DESTROY
the hard drive of anyone whose mail is in your inbox, and who's mail is in
their inbox, and so on. If this virus remains unchecked, it has the
potential
to do a great deal of DAMAGE to computer networks worldwide!!!!
Please, delete the message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!" as soon as you see
it!
And pass this message along to all of your friends and relatives, and the
other readers of the newsgroups and mailing lists which you are on, so that
they are not hurt by this dangerous virus!!!!
George Ferzoco tel ++ 44 (0)116 252 2654
Director of Studies for Italian fax ++ 44 (0)116 252 3633
University of Leicester e-mail [log in to unmask]
School of Modern Languages
LEICESTER LE1 7RH UNITED KINGDOM
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