THIS IS A HOAX.
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW OPENING UP A TEXT FILE FROM EMAIL ACTIVATES A
VIRUS PROGRAM.
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: E-mail Virus Alert
Author: [log in to unmask] at internet-mail
Date: 5/6/96 2:03 PM
I received this e-mail from one of our engineers within Merix. Watch out!
John Sharp
Merix Corporation, Forest Grove, OR
503-359-9300 (5-4351)
503-359-1040 FAX
[log in to unmask]
__________________ Forward Header__________________________________
Subject: Most recent Virus warning!!!!
Date: 4/24/96 9:59 AM
I received this information from a friend who has encountered this
virus...
"Beware of a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet.
If you receive an E-Mail message with the subject line "Good Times",
DO NOT OPEN IT, DO NOT READ IT, but DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY, no matter
who it says the sender is. It rewrites your hard drive, totally
destroying anything on it. Tell anyone you know who might be affected
by this, or anyone who is using the internet at work or home.
The FCC released a warning two weeks ago Wednesday concerning a matter
of major importance to any regular user of the internet. Apparently a
new computer virus has been engineered by a user of America On-Line
that is unparalleled in it's destructive capability. Other more well
known viruses such as "Stoned", "Airwolf", or "Michelangelo" pale in
comparison to the prospects terrifying, said the FCC, is the fact that
no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected. It
can spread through the existing E-Mail systems of the Internet. Once a
computer is infected, one of several things can happen. If the
computer contains a hard drive, it will most likely be destroyed. If
the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in
an nth-complexity binary loop -- which can severely damage the
processor if left running that way to long.
Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is
happening until it is far too late. Luckily, there is one sure means
of detecting what is known as the "Good Times" virus. It always
travels to new computers the same way, in a text E-Mail message with
the subject line reading "Good Times". Avoiding infection is easy once
the file has been received -- not reading it! The act of loading the
file into the mail server's ASCII buffer causes the "Good Times"
mainline program to initialize and execute.
The program is highly intelligent -- it will send copies of itself
to everyone whose E-Mail address is contained in a receive-mail file
or a send-mail file, if it can find one. It will then proceed to trash
the computer it is running on. The bottom line here is -- if you
receive a file with the subject line "Good Times", DELETE IT
IMMEDIATELY!! DO NOT READ IT!! Rest assured that whoever's name was on
the "from:" line was struck by the virus. Warn your friends and local
system users of this newest threat to the Internet. It could save them
a lot of time and money.
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