Mail Archives: djgpp/1996/02/21/05:32:07
Data Fellows Ltd's F-PROT Professional development & support <F-PROT-Support@
DataFellows.com> said:-
> Good Times ... is just a hoax. This rare `worm' ... more accurately, it was
> an efficient chain letter ... relied on people to pass it along ...
etc etc as people already know by now.
> ... no public e-mail system supports the execution of programs while the
> accompanying message is read ...
This `Good Times' is fictional, but Microsoft Word viruses can spread by email
(if your email reader calls Microsoft Word) and they certainly ARE real!
> In April 1995 an Australian virus group known as VLAD published a real PC
> virus called `Good Times'. This version of `Good Times' is an ordinary file
> virus which infects COM and EXE files. To further confuse the issue, this
> message is included in the virus's source code:-
; The act of loading the file
; into a mail server's ASCII
; buffer causes the "Good
; Times" mainline program to
; initialize and execute.
; Remember to email all your
; friends, warning them about
; Good Times!
> For obvious reasons, anti-virus programs will not recognize this virus by
> the name `Good Times'. Instead, it has been named `GT-Spoof'.
> A similar incident took place also in the beginning of 1993. It involved a
> rumor about a fictional virus called `Proto-T', which was soon followed by
> the real thing.
>> See also http://www.tcp.co.uk/tcp/good-times/ and
>> ftp://usit.net/pub/lesjones/good-times-virus-hoax-faq.txt.
>> [Mikko Hypponen, Data Fellows Ltd's F-PROT Professional Support]
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