X-Message-Number: 6635 From: Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 17:27:20 GMT Subject: Viruses On July 24, 1996, the FCC issued a warning concerning a matter of major importance to any regular user of the Internet. Apparantly 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" and "Michaelangelo" pale in comparison to the prospects of this newest creation by a warped mentality. What makes this virus so 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 system of The Internet. Once a computer is infected, one of several things can happen. If the computer contains a hard drive, that will most likely be destroyed.If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an infinite binary loop, which can severly damage the processor if left running that way too long. The virus is known as "Good Times", 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 simply by 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 hightly intelligent, it will send copies of itself to everyone whose E-Mail address is contained in a receive mail file, or a sent mail file, if it can find one. It will then proceed to trash the computer it is running on. Bottom line, if you receive a file with the subject line "Good Times" delete it immediatly, Do not read it. Additionally, IMMORTALIST subscriber, Deborah Fleming, reports a new Trojan Horse virus has emerged on the Internet with the name KZIP300.ZIP, so named as to give the impression that this file is a new version of the PKZIP software used to "ZIP", (compress) files. Do not download this file under any circumstances!! If you install or expand this file, it will wipe your hard disk clean, and affect modems 14.4 and higher. This is a destructive virus and as yet there is no way to clean up. DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF THE EXTENSION. Hope this saves someone some grief. John Bull Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6635