In article <3m8t05$1ab at cisunix1.dfci.harvard.edu> york at mbcrr.dfci.harvard.edu (Ian A. York) writes:
>>The "Good Times" virus is a hoax.
As a followup to my followup, here is the official debunking of the Good
Times host, from the US Dept. of Energy Computer Incident Advisory
Capability Notes from Dec. 4/1994. The WWW reference for this is:
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes04c.shtml
and a brief quote from this:
"THE "Good Times" VIRUS IS AN URBAN LEGEND
....
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.
. . . .
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."
--
Ian York (york at mbcrr.harvard.edu)
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney St., Boston MA 02115
Phone (617)-632-3921 Fax (617)-632-2627
