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


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