[3741] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: Just a rumor NOT a virus
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gene Hardesty)
Sat Dec 7 03:18:24 1996
Date: Fri, 06 Dec 1996 15:36:22 +0900
From: Gene Hardesty <geneh@surf-line.or.jp>
Reply-To: geneh@surf-line.or.jp
To: Albert Lunde <Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu>
CC: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Yeah, but you never know if some virogen takes this fact that everyone
believes that it's a rumor and makes a super virus, names it that, and
infects the whole inet population...BUT that's unlike and it's only a
thought. Hopefully, I'm not giving any ideas to potenial virogens out
there....
G.
Albert Lunde wrote:
>
> Hugh McNeill wrote:
> > > Is it authentic?
> > Partially. The email scaryness and hype are all trash. The only way you can
>
> No, the particular virus rumor that was quoted at the start of this
> thread is not _in any way_ authentic. The resources that people
> have already cited clearly state that it is a hoax.
>
> Just because there is _some way_ to transmit a virus that
> sounds somehow similar to a rumor does not mean the rumor is true
> or "partially authentic". (I don't want to hear a technical
> discussion of what can and can't be sent in e-mail, either,
> that's also in the references from CIAC).
>
> This fallacy caused confusion between the (real) word macro threat
> and the (hoax) "Good Times" virus rumor and helped spread the
> rumor further.
>
> In several years on 50+ mailing lists I've hear all the virus
> rumors cited in the CIAC blurb, but I've never heard one
> such repeatedly forwarded warning that was both timely and true.
