| Thought you might be interested in
this message. If you receive an email with a file called
"California" do not open the file. The file
contains the "WOBBLER" virus. This information was announced yesterday morning by IBM. The report says that ... "This is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa" and 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 at this time. Please pass this warning to everyone in your address book and share it with all your online friends ASAP so that the destruction it can cause may be minimized." |
Unfortunately you have fallen victim to one of the most pervasive and destructive viruses currently at large on the internet. It's called the HOAX, and its destructive powers include WASTING your time, as well as the time of your friends, co-workers, and acquaintances to whom you forward the warning. It also clogs the 'net and wastes bandwidth. It's the modern equivalent of the chain letter, warning of horrible misfortune for those who scoff.
"Wobbler" is just one of the many variants of this kind of fraud. Here a partial list of some of the more well-known hoaxes.
Is Juno your internet service provider? Unless you use the newer deluxe version (I believe it is called Juno Gold) you absolutely cannot receive attachments. No attachements = no virus. An e-mail without attachments is simply TEXT and can't contain anything beyond the words you see on your screen.
Most hoaxes contain two (or more) telling pieces of evidence that are fakes.
If you receive one of these warnings, Please, PLEASE, do the following. Step 2 is for background information you'll need. Step 3 is for when someone sends you a warning and you need to know what to do about it.
1. Protect yourself. Get a virus scanner that handles your e-mail program properly and use it. Do it now, before you get a suspicious e-mail.
2. Check the US government (Department of Energy) Computer Incident Advisory Virus Virus Hoax Page at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html. (Note that there's no www in that address)
The main site address is http://www.ciac.org/ciac has interesting links, including one on e-mail chain letters. But that area lists all known vulnerabilities for all systems. It's mostly of interest to people who administer large networks directly connected to the internet.
Please read over the hoax page. especially the first paragraph under "Please Note". Click the links for "How to Identify a New Hoax" and the other two that follow. Return to the hoax page and scroll down past the hoax listing (hit PageDn once) and read the paragraph starting "The Internet is constantly being flooded ..." A very critical paragraph follows, reproduced below:
Users are requested to please not spread unconfirmed warnings about viruses and Trojans. If you receive an unvalidated warning, don't pass it to all your friends, pass it to your computer security manager to validate first. Validated warnings from the incident response teams and antivirus vendors have valid return addresses and are usually PGP signed with the organization's key.
3. Check some websites to try to determine whether a new virus warning being circulated has any validity or not. The top anti-virus software makers are good bets-- try Network Associates at http://www.mcafee.com for starters. There's interesting links there. The short path for details on virus hoaxes, including a database of what's out there, is http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp