We've been had. This message has been making the rounds by E-mail, and apparently it's not the first time. A client kindly forwarded it us, just as someone forwarded it to her. We didn't know whether it had any merit, nor did we checked it for validity. In fact it sounded to us rather specious, but we thought we'd get it to you early, just in case.
What a reaction we got! This particular virus alert is a well-known scam that we'd never heard of. Well, people, we stand corrected. For the record, yes, we know that a file must be executable to contain a virus, and yes, we know we should check sources before posting news. And yes, the modus operandi of the virus sounded unlikely to us. But what the heck, sometimes you get to be the sucker!
Here's the notice we received, not edited for punctuation or grammar. Following the "alert," some reaction from our clients and friends. Our final take on this: We'd rather take a chance and pass the word to you, even if we can't confirm the report. It's better than sitting on our thumb and watch our clients' files get trashed, knowing we could have made a difference.
For more information, we suggest you visit Rob Rosenberger's Computer Virus Myths page. It's a savvy evaluation that separates the real threats from the simple scares.
There is a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet. If you receive an e- mail message with the subject line "Good Times", DO NOT read the message, DELETE it immediately. Please read the messages below. Some miscreant is sending e-mail under the title "Good Times" nation wide, 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.
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 e-mail 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- 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 e-mail 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 here is - if you receive a file with the subject line "Good Times", delete it immediately! Do not read it"
Rest assured that whoever's 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.
I would never be one to say ignore a virus alert -- but this particular notice has been floating around the Internet for about two years now. Same message, same wording, everything. No one I have ever talked with on AOL or the Internet has ever been infected with this so-called e-mail virus. If memory serves, the warning first appeared around April 1st 1995. We all got a good chuckle out of it.
Ron Smith
Don't believe it. Viruses don't live in non-executable files; specifically, they don't live in e-mail. And merely *reading* text files won't hurt a thing--how's the text file gonna know that you've read it?
If it makes you feel any better, this scam circulated through the Census Bureau twice last year.
Stephanie Smilay
Even if it is a scam, I also prefer to err on the side of caution. The last thing I need is to receive a virus through email. So, thanks for the heads-up even if it turned out to be wrong.
Sally Schuster
An e-mail message is just a group of IP packets that get assembled into ASCII text. Reading the mail just consists of displaying the ASCII text. There is no opportunity in any of those processes for instructions to get loaded from the message and.
The real virus in this case is the "warning" message itself, which is nothing more than a particularly sneaky chain letter.
mikel evins at Apple Computer
Ok, it may have been bogus, but it sure sounded like a warning I got from a specialist source-- probably McAfee, to whose WScan/VShield I subscribe--a few moons back.
And, I'd rather field a couple of bogus alerts than have my system zapped.
Bill Sutcliffe
We got a good laugh here...but seriously, a friend of mine downloaded an "innocent" message from usenet that had a binary attachment on it that replicated itself on all his .exe files...he had to reformat his hard drive and reinstall Windows. Ouch!
Cindy at SmartNet
Good Times Virus has been floating around the Internet for the past 4 years... It's the biggest electronic hoax that I've heard of and it still hasn't gone away, don't worry about it, for a virus to do any damage it must be executed, so first off this isn't a virus, and second there is no danger present even if it were unless you executed some infected program.
Robert G. Fisher, System Administrator/Programmer, NEOCOM Microspecialists Inc.
So...u poo-poo it, but if there is a possibility that such exists I WANT TO KNOW about it. In my 17 years in computers, I have never been panicked or concerned about any virus, but this thing really pisses me off if even remotely true. Since this thing cites the FCC, I want to know if they put out such an alert or not. And if not, the original perpetrators of this msg should be sought out and quietly castrated if located.
Glenn Burklund
Landmark Computer Labs Home Page
url: http://www.landmark.org/virus.html
Last update: March 8, 1998