I recieved this email today. Jim, what's the scoop on this supposed virus which attacks mac's as well as pc's?
Very Urgent!!!!!!!
PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU HAVE AN E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR.
If you receive an email titled:
"It Takes Guts to Say Jesus"
DO NOT OPEN IT.
It will erase everything on your hard drive. This information was announced yesterday morning from ; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa," and that there is NO Remedy for it at this time.
Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a
new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. Pass this warning along to EVERYONE in your address book ! and please share it with all your online friends ASAP so that this threat maybe stopped. Please practice cautionary measures and tell anyone that may have access to your computer.
Forward this warning to everyone that you know that might access the Internet.
Joyce L. Bober
IBM Information Systems Pittsburgh Mailing Systems
412 - 922-8744
This is spam. Companies like AOL and Microsoft never announce anything about viruses, although fake emails about fake viruses always say something like "Microsoft said..." or "NBC news said..."
The easy way to tell a real from a fake warning is that a real warning will have a valid URL to an authoritative website (like cert or securityfocus.) A fake warning (which 99% of them are) will just say it is news but not give a valid URL. This will always be true. If it doesn't have a URL don't pass it on. If it does, go to the URL, read the source, and judge for yourself whether to pass on the message.
As for a virus that can infect PCs and Macs, it is possible. The ugly sub7 trojan now has a Mac version. Anything is possible. Still, 99% of these things exist because of bad choices made by Microsoft in its (mainly) Outlook Express email client and (sometimes) Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. Because these programs are tied so closely to the windows operating system, malicious programs (like email attachments) can in some cases do grave harm to computers running Microsoft Windows. Yes, including possibly erasing your hard drive, although I don't know of any ever found in the wild that do this. Outlook Express runs on the Mac, but the malicious code (in almost every case) will not be able to do anything to the Mac OS. Maybe a Mac user can propogate the virus, and certainly you can be affected by having your email box filled with bogus email from other Outlook users, but in almost all cases Mac users will be safe. As will linux and other unix users. This isn't really because the Mac OS or linux are totally secure, but more from the fact that windows is completely dominate (a monoculture for you plant people) thus presenting a prime target while being incredible insecure at the same time. D'oh.
If you insist on using Outlook Express on Windows (which really I can't see why anyone does at this point) please read this message and follow the simple steps. It will help you not get infected.
|
Very Urgent!!!!!!!
PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU HAVE AN E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR.
If you receive an email titled:
"It Takes Guts to Say Jesus"
DO NOT OPEN IT.
It will erase everything on your hard drive. This information was announced yesterday morning from ; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa," and that there is NO Remedy for it at this time.
Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a
new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. Pass this warning along to EVERYONE in your address book ! and please share it with all your online friends ASAP so that this threat maybe stopped. Please practice cautionary measures and tell anyone that may have access to your computer.
Forward this warning to everyone that you know that might access the Internet.
Joyce L. Bober
IBM Information Systems Pittsburgh Mailing Systems
412 - 922-8744
- steve 10-03-2001 6:45 pm
This is spam. Companies like AOL and Microsoft never announce anything about viruses, although fake emails about fake viruses always say something like "Microsoft said..." or "NBC news said..."
The easy way to tell a real from a fake warning is that a real warning will have a valid URL to an authoritative website (like cert or securityfocus.) A fake warning (which 99% of them are) will just say it is news but not give a valid URL. This will always be true. If it doesn't have a URL don't pass it on. If it does, go to the URL, read the source, and judge for yourself whether to pass on the message.
As for a virus that can infect PCs and Macs, it is possible. The ugly sub7 trojan now has a Mac version. Anything is possible. Still, 99% of these things exist because of bad choices made by Microsoft in its (mainly) Outlook Express email client and (sometimes) Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. Because these programs are tied so closely to the windows operating system, malicious programs (like email attachments) can in some cases do grave harm to computers running Microsoft Windows. Yes, including possibly erasing your hard drive, although I don't know of any ever found in the wild that do this. Outlook Express runs on the Mac, but the malicious code (in almost every case) will not be able to do anything to the Mac OS. Maybe a Mac user can propogate the virus, and certainly you can be affected by having your email box filled with bogus email from other Outlook users, but in almost all cases Mac users will be safe. As will linux and other unix users. This isn't really because the Mac OS or linux are totally secure, but more from the fact that windows is completely dominate (a monoculture for you plant people) thus presenting a prime target while being incredible insecure at the same time. D'oh.
If you insist on using Outlook Express on Windows (which really I can't see why anyone does at this point) please read this message and follow the simple steps. It will help you not get infected.
- jim 10-03-2001 7:30 pm [add a comment]
i got it too
- Skinny 10-04-2001 12:09 am [add a comment]
You mean that you recieved the spam email too?
- steve 10-04-2001 1:24 am [add a comment]
yes i recieved this spam
- Skinny 10-04-2001 2:45 am [add a comment]
" i " antes de " e " excepto después de " c "
- dave 10-04-2001 4:37 am [add a comment]
c si sea see senor
- Skinny 10-06-2001 3:54 pm [add a comment]
Just as I suspected. I had forgotten that you have explained the spam disguised as virus warning before......But I did smell a rat and so I thought I'd check it with you. I didn't forward this email to anyone. Maybe I should delete the post from this page?....It is spam after all.
- steve 10-04-2001 1:23 am [add a comment]
No need to delete. The advice to not open an attachment that says "It takes guts to say Jesus" is a most likely a sound idea regardless.
- jim 10-04-2001 1:35 am [add a comment]
LOL
- steve 10-04-2001 1:47 am [add a comment]
707 (on my back)
- bill 10-04-2001 2:30 am [add a comment]
¿Qien es esto Hay-Zues, y por que necesita intestinos?
- mark 10-04-2001 3:17 am [add a comment]
Your comment does not process through my input matrix. Could you resubmit this in Fortran?
- jim 10-04-2001 4:14 am [add a comment]
Gore Vidal Sassoon
- frank 10-04-2001 11:04 pm [add a comment]