Re: new virus warning

[Lee Hickling xywrite@xxxxxxxx]

No, Rene,
   The AOL4FREE hoax is one thing. The AOL4FREE.COM trojan is another. It
is real, and really dangerous. although it's not very sophisticated. It can
do major damage if anybody is innocent enough to get it as an attachment to
an e-mail message, go to her or his TEMP or BIN directory or wherever
attachments go, and run it.
   A virus can only be transmitted by an executable file. An e-mail
message is not an executable file.
   I have, and use, three antivirus programs -- McAfee, F-PROT and
Integrity Master, plus running Norton's DD/Image utility automatically when
I exit Windows, plus keeping a full backup and incremental backups on a
Colorado tape backup unit. And I have rescue diskettes for McAfee, F-PROT,
IM and Norton, in a file on my deskside table.
   Plus I don't use any of the notoriously vulnerable MegaSoft programs,
such as Word, Excel or Explorer.  
   Is that paranoid enough for you?
   But the fact remains that there is a greater danger to my system and
yours from spilling a cup of coffee, or starting a diskette with a file from
a friend, or file corruption from the unpredictable interactions of some of
today's huge and buggy programs, than from a virus.
   In today's environment, it's important for anyone who uses the Net, or
exchanges data by sneakernet, to have a fairly clear understanding of how
viruses spread, how they work, and what the dangers are. It's also important
not to lose our heads and pass on misinformation.
   I stand by everything I said in the post to which you replied.
     -- Lee Hickling 

>>Incredible. I would have thought that the subscribers to the XyWrite mail
>>list were too sophisticated to fall for this hoary hoax. I have saved the
>
>Umm... apparently this thing exists. It is a DOS batch file containing
>something like: del c:\*.* -- veeeeery sophisticated, and apparently
>a number of dimwits have executed the program, expecting to get a
>free ride on AOL. Of course, calling it a "virus" is stretching the
definition a bit --
>I'd prefer to call it an "intelligence test". :-)
>-- Rene 
Lee Hickling