[3729] in WWW Security List Archive
Re : Any internet virus (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Security mailing listr user)
Fri Dec 6 06:17:50 1996
From: Security mailing listr user <security@argon.dcs.kcl.ac.uk>
To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 08:54:21 +0000 (GMT)
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
But can't you do some "interesting" things with ANSI escape sequences?, I
know there was a lot of fuss about this in the PC world a few years ago,
which resulted in a lot of ppl removing ANSI.SYS from the config.sys file.
Al.
>
> >I don't know about you, but it seems to me that a virus that spreads
> >through ASCII is certainly nothing to worry about. Computer aren't
> >designed to execute ASCII files. It needs to be converted to binary
> >first. Or am I wrong?
>
> The author of this "hoax" was making a little joke. The message warning
> of the virus *is* the virus. It spreads by having people read the message
> and forwarding it to their friends. Thus through the "mechanism" of
> people reading and forwarding, an ASCII text virus can spread.
>
> This bit of humor is lost on most recipients. In some sense, it's not a
> hoax at all; in some sense it is a virus, it is spreading, it is wasting
> massive amounts of disk space (in people's inboxes) and network
> bandwidth (as it is sent along). And it is immune to all existing
> virus scanners (until someone puts a filter on their mail gateway
> discarding the warnings before they arrive).
>
> --charlie
> (charlie_kaufman@iris.com)
>
