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Sorry, folks. This is just a modern version of War of the (Cyber) Worlds. Please read this message from Indiana University's systems people in response to my questions. . . ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 20:58:29 -0500 (EST) From: Greg <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: good times ***** The "Good Times" virus is an urban legend!*** [from the CIAC notes] In the early part of December 1994, CIAC started to receive information requests about a supposed "virus" which could be contracted via America Online, simply by reading a message. THIS IS A HOAX. Upon investigation, CIAC has determined that this message originated from both a user of America Online and a student at a university at approximately the same time, and it was meant to be a hoax. CIAC has also seen other variations of this hoax, the main one is that any electronic mail message with the subject line of "xxx-1" will infect your computer. This rumor has been spreading very widely. This spread is due mainly to the fact that many people have seen a message with "Good Times" in the header. They delete the message without reading it, thus believing that they have saved themselves from being attacked. These first-hand reports give a false sense of credibility to the alert message. There has been one confirmation of a person who received a message with "xxx-1" in the header, but an empty message body. Then, (in a panic, because he had heard the alert), he checked his PC for viruses (the first time he checked his machine in months) and found a pre-existing virus on his machine. He incorrectly came to the conclusion that the E-mail message gave him the virus (this particular virus could NOT POSSIBLY have spread via an E-mail message). This person then spread his alert. As of this date, there are no known viruses which can infect merely through reading a mail message. For a virus to spread some program must be executed. Reading a mail message does not execute the mail message. Yes, Trojans have been found as executable attachments to mail messages, the most notorious being the IBM VM Christmas Card Trojan of 1987, also the TERM MODULE Worm (reference CIAC Bulletin B-7) and the GAME2 MODULE Worm (CIAC Bulletin B-12). But this is not the case for this particular "virus" alert. If you encounter this message being distributed on any mailing lists, simply ignore it or send a follow-up message stating that this is a false rumor. Karyn Pichnarczyk CIAC Team [log in to unmask] CIAC is the U.S. Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability. For up-to-date information on computer viruses (and hoaxes, such as "Good Times"), see the CIAC Web page: http://ciac.llnl.gov. You can find more information about the Good Times hoax on the CIAC Web site at these URLs: http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes09.shtml http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes05d.shtml