Hello, everyone! This message is extremely important. It is about a very
highly intelligent virus that is being spread nationwide called "Good
Times". Once you have read this message, please forward to anyone
you care about.
Thanks.
SUBJECT: [Very Important !!! ]
There is a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet. If you
receive an email message with the subject line "Good Times", DO NOT
read the message, DELETE it immediately. Please read the messages
below.
Some miscreant is sending email under the title "Good Times"
nationwide, if you get anything like this, DON'T DOWN LOAD THE FILE! It
has a virus that rewrites your hard drive, obliterating anything on it.
Please be careful and forward this mail to anyone you care about. The
FCC released a warning last 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 its 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 be spread through the existing email systems 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 nth-complexity infinite binary loop -which can severely
damage the processor if left running that way too 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 now
known as the "Good Times" virus.
It always travels to new computers the same way in a text email
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 highly intelligent- it will send copies of itself to everyone
whose email 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.
The bottom line is: - if you receive a file with the subject line "Good
Times", delete it immediately! Do not read it" Rest assured that whoever'
name was on the "From" line was surely 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.
Could you pass this along to your global mailing list as well? >
DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF THE
EXTENSION >
We work closely with the military and received this message from a
very reliable source in Washington DC this morning.
A NEW Trojan Horse Virus has emerged on the internet with the name
PKZIP300.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, the virus WILL wipe your hard disk clean and affect
modems at 14.4 and higher. This is an extremely destructive virus and
there is NOT yet a way of cleaning up this one. >
REPEAT: DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300
REGARDLESS OF THE EXTENSION.
>Shelley Stienstra, VP Operations, Pinnacle Group >
