Serious Computer Virus or Just a Hoax?
I received email yesterday warning me about serious virus that can completely wipe out my C
drive. It sounds very serious but before you hurry up and share the news about this
dangerous virus with your friends and subscribers, it doesn't hurt to check whether this
virus really exists or this is simply a hoax.
Hoax is a false notification about pseudo-virus that doesn't exist in reality. It's still a
mystery to me why people create hoaxes. I don't see any logical explanation for this. When
people create viruses, it's morally wrong, but at least motive is clear - either financial
gain or a challenge to create a hack to break into super-secure system and prove your
superior technical knowledge.
But with hoaxes, there seams to be no reason to create them. Nevertheless there are hundreds
if not thousands of hoaxes around. Here is the example of the latest hoax I mentioned in the beginning of this post:
"Bad virus.... READ
READ AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Get this sent around to your contacts ASAP...we don't need this spreadingaround.....
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
"Invitation"
regardless of who sent it .
It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard discC of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has youre-mail address in his/her contact list, that is why you should send thise-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 timesthan to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called "invitation", though sent by a friend,do notopen it and shut down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified byMicrosoft as the most destructive virus ever.
This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yetfor this kind of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vitalinformation is kept.
SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW, COPY THIS E-MAIL AND SEND IT TO
YOUR FRIENDS AND REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US"
So hoaxes are notifications about "viruses" that never existed. It doesn't mean that hoaxes
are harmless though. They can easily damage your reputation if you will forward such email to your friends or clients/customers without first verifying that this virus actually exists.
If you do this and your recipient will later find out that it's a bad joke, then they won't
take seriously your next notification when you will try to warn them about real virus and in the future they may not take seriously your advice regarding their business.
There is a very simple way for you to verify if virus is real and can cause actual damage.
Just go to http://www.symantec.com/, and in the search box enter the name of the possible
virus followed by the word "virus".
For example, in case of the hoax described above, you can enter "Olympic Torch virus" or
"invitation virus". In both cases you will see results that will help you clearly understand that this is a hoax.
Oleg Ilin - Web Tester
from http://www.web-feed.com
Avoid 10 Most Dangerous Internet Scams and Frauds Those Internet Scams Can ruin your life:
http://www.1ezhost.biz/10intscams_signup.html
drive. It sounds very serious but before you hurry up and share the news about this
dangerous virus with your friends and subscribers, it doesn't hurt to check whether this
virus really exists or this is simply a hoax.
Hoax is a false notification about pseudo-virus that doesn't exist in reality. It's still a
mystery to me why people create hoaxes. I don't see any logical explanation for this. When
people create viruses, it's morally wrong, but at least motive is clear - either financial
gain or a challenge to create a hack to break into super-secure system and prove your
superior technical knowledge.
But with hoaxes, there seams to be no reason to create them. Nevertheless there are hundreds
if not thousands of hoaxes around. Here is the example of the latest hoax I mentioned in the beginning of this post:
"Bad virus.... READ
READ AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Get this sent around to your contacts ASAP...we don't need this spreadingaround.....
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
"Invitation"
regardless of who sent it .
It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard discC of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has youre-mail address in his/her contact list, that is why you should send thise-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 timesthan to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called "invitation", though sent by a friend,do notopen it and shut down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified byMicrosoft as the most destructive virus ever.
This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yetfor this kind of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vitalinformation is kept.
SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW, COPY THIS E-MAIL AND SEND IT TO
YOUR FRIENDS AND REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US"
So hoaxes are notifications about "viruses" that never existed. It doesn't mean that hoaxes
are harmless though. They can easily damage your reputation if you will forward such email to your friends or clients/customers without first verifying that this virus actually exists.
If you do this and your recipient will later find out that it's a bad joke, then they won't
take seriously your next notification when you will try to warn them about real virus and in the future they may not take seriously your advice regarding their business.
There is a very simple way for you to verify if virus is real and can cause actual damage.
Just go to http://www.symantec.com/, and in the search box enter the name of the possible
virus followed by the word "virus".
For example, in case of the hoax described above, you can enter "Olympic Torch virus" or
"invitation virus". In both cases you will see results that will help you clearly understand that this is a hoax.
Oleg Ilin - Web Tester
from http://www.web-feed.com
Avoid 10 Most Dangerous Internet Scams and Frauds Those Internet Scams Can ruin your life:
http://www.1ezhost.biz/10intscams_signup.html
posted by 1EzHost at 5/08/2006 10:32:00 PM
2 Comments:
Good to see more information about hoaxes posted.
On your ponderings as to why people do this - consider the hoax emails you see forwarded from unsuspecting newbie internet user to newbie internet user, generally people will put all of their addresses in the "To" or "Cc" fields and will not bother to trim / edit the forwarded mesasge.
As the message is forwarded each time it will gather another 30... 50... 100 email addresses. Eventually this will be posted on a forum or BBS or mailing list somewhere by some panicking recipient asking for help - resulting in all of these email addresses being be displayed to the general public on some web page...
Along come the spiders, and then people start to wonder why they get so much spam... well I rekcon that this could be one of the reasons.
- Dan (currently filtering / deleting around 400 spam / virus messages a day sent to my 9 year old email address)
Excellent note,
Dan.
I have not thought that somebody would actually post the whole email in the forum, why not just copy and paste the note from the body?
But I guess, you're right, newbies can make such mistake...
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