Subject: E-Mail Virus Alert

From: [email-masked] (Jim Fellure)
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 11:44:12 PST

FYI, may be old news

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From: Walter McFall <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: E-Mail Virus Alert
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 14:07:39 +0800
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

Sorry to lurk for so long before posting, but I'd hate for anyone to get
this nasty computer virus...
I just received the following from a u.s. military source:

Forwarded message:

1. 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?

2. Subject:  New and Dangerous Virus For your information ...

DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF THE EXTENSION

We work closely with the military and received this message from a
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.

=====
Walt

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From: "James R. Adair" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 14:41:05 -0400 (EDT)

The "Good Times Virus" is a well-known hoax.  There is no such thing.  
Please ignore the previous warning.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------