Please bookmark http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ and always check here or at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html before sending on virus messages.  Remember that all major companies are very concerned about the damage that viruses can do and are members of professional networks that propagate true virus information.

Following copied from the Symantec (maker of Norton Antivirus) website http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wobbler-hoax.html

WOBBLER Virus Hoax

Aliases: California
 Known Variants: Hoax
 Infection Length: Hoax
 Area of Infection:
Hoax Likelihood:
Hoax Region Reported: email
 Characteristics: Hoax

Description: 

The following two messages have been sent out by email. They are both versions of the same hoax. This "virus" does not exist.

The hoax message includes one of the following "warnings": 

Dear All,
For your reference, take necessary precautions. If you receive an email with a file called California, do not open the file. The file contains WOBBLER virus.

WARNING
This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa", and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it.

Second sample of hoax message "warning": 

VIRUS ALERT

If you receive an email with a file called "California" do not open the file. The file contains the virus. This information was announced yesterday morning by IBM.

The report says that "this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa" and there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it at this time.

Please pass this warning to everyone in your address book and share it with all your online friends asap so that the destruction it can cause may be minimized.

Please ignore any messages regarding this "hoax" and do not pass on any messages regarding it. Passing on messages about this hoax serves only to further propagate it.

Write-up by: Motoaki Yamamura
Updated: August 26, 1999



>>> "Gabe Cherian" <[log in to unmask]> 11/07/99 04:16PM >>>

-----Original Message-----
From: mark <[log in to unmask]>
To: ed larsen <[log in to unmask]>; elaine falkenstein <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>; gabe cherian <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>; adam slonim <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, November 07, 1999 8:48 AM
Subject: virus alert

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