Virus Hoaxes

Written by Richard Lowe


Have you ever gotten an email message like this?

BIGGGG TROUBLE !!!! DO NOT OPEN "WTC Survivor" It is a virus that will erase your whole "C" drive. It will come to you inrepparttar form of an E-Mail from a familiar person. I repeat a friend sent it to me, but called and warned me before I opened it. He was not so lucky and now he can't even start his computer! Forward this to everyone in your address book. I would rather receive this 25 times than not at all. If you receive an email called "WTC Survivor" do not open it. Delete it right away! This virus removes all dynamic link libraries (.dll files) from your computer.

Again,,, I urge all of you to make sure your virius scanners are up to date daily!!!!!! FG

Sounds very bad, doesn't it? My, what a horrible virus. It, and others like it, will eat your hard drive, destroy your email, infect every other machine on your network and listed in your address book, and even perhaps give you cookies and make your car break down!

This email and others like it are simply hoaxes? How do I know they are a hoax and not a real warning? Here's how it works. A virus propagates (reproduces) by automatically sending itself to all ofrepparttar 132061 addresses in your address book. This is a fairly complex piece of code, requiring a little knowledge onrepparttar 132062 part ofrepparttar 132063 person who createdrepparttar 132064 virus.

Well, instead of writing code to propagate something, why not ask some gullible people to do it for you? That's what these hoaxes are all about -repparttar 132065 "virus" isrepparttar 132066 email message andrepparttar 132067 delivery system is human being.

Why will people do this? Sometimes it's just for a laugh, and sometimes it's for more insidious reasons. Someone could send out a message which claimed that any message from AOL contained a virus, for example, in an effort to make AOL look bad.

Here is one ofrepparttar 132068 first hoaxes known to have been sent out acrossrepparttar 132069 internet. It went out in 1988.

SUBJ: Really Nasty Virus AREA: GENERAL (1)

I've just discovered probablyrepparttar 132070 world's worst computer virus yet. I had just finished a late night session of BBS'ing and file treading when I exited Telix 3 and attempted to run pkxarc to unarcrepparttar 132071 software I had downloaded. Next thing I knew my hard disk was seeking all over and it was apparently writing random sectors. Thank god for strong coffee and a recent backup. Everything was back to normal, so I calledrepparttar 132072 BBS again and downloaded a file. When I went to use ddir to list repparttar 132073 directory, my hard disk was getting trashed again. I

Super Snooper

Written by Mike Banks Valentine


You've heard enough about Big Brother to last a lifetime, so I've renamed him Super Snooper to spare yourepparttar cliche during this discussion.

Super Snooper, (Big Brother), is using terrorism as an excuse to spy on everyone, scan their irises, print their fingers, record their movements and assign threat levels to each and every one of us. The latest announcement fromrepparttar 132058 airline industry tells us ofrepparttar 132059 testing of a huge new database full of facial recognition files, credit card activity records, airline seating charts, travel histories, driver licenses, social security numbers, bank records, employment records and any other "relevant" information they deem necessary to track terrorists.

The computer all this information is stored on is capable of noting who you sit near onrepparttar 132060 plane and if you know anyone else onrepparttar 132061 passenger list. It knows if you've been sleeping. It knows if you're awake. It knows if you've been bad or good. So be good for goodness sakes! Super Snooper knows all-inrepparttar 132062 name of security and safety. I hope everything it knows is, not only true, but unfailingly correct in it's conclusions drawn from everything stored in those really deep data piles.

Snooper sniffsrepparttar 132063 slightest whiff of smelly actions and, using predictive behavior models, assigns a threat level to you and me and dear old Auntie Mabel. Well, that's O.K. with me! It's all in our best interest, right? Security and safety are more important than protecting privacy, right? Right?!

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, hop over torepparttar 132064 Washington Post story from February 1, atrepparttar 132065 link below and review it for yourself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5185-2002Jan31.html

It's not just terrorism that is putting security inrepparttar 132066 news headlines and privacy onrepparttar 132067 backburner. This week Microsoft announcedrepparttar 132068 appointment of a new Security Czar who takes repparttar 132069 helm as their top privacy protector on April Fools Day. Scott Charney is a former Department of Justice Cybercrime cop who callsrepparttar 132070 top security job at Microsoft, "Irresistable."

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