RE>>FWD>FW: new virus -Forwarded            4/20/95     11:26 AM

I just received the following which may shed light on the "virus"

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Date: 4/20/95 11:20 AM

Ah, this was discussed on bionet. software.  Turns out it is the computer
equivalent of urban folklore.  There's a web page that includes virus alerts,
the DOE's Computer incident advisory Capability,
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes04c.shtml
and it says the following:
THE "Good Times" VIRUS IS AN URBAN LEGEND

In the early part of December, CIAC started to receive information requests
about a supposed "virus"
which could be contracted via America OnLine, simply by reading a message. The
following is the
message that CIAC received:

 Here is some important information. Beware of a file called Goodtimes.

 Happy Chanukah everyone, and be careful out there. There is a virus on
America
 Online being sent by E-Mail. If you get anything called "Good Times",
DON'T read it
 or download it. It is a virus that will erase your hard drive. Forward
this to all your
 friends. It may help them a lot.

THIS IS A HOAX. Upon investigation, CIAC has determined that this message
originated from both
a user of America Online and a student at a university at approximately the
same time, and it was meant
to be a hoax.

CIAC has also seen other variations of this hoax, the main one is that any
electronic mail message with
the subject line of "xxx-1" will infect your computer.

This rumor has been spreading very widely. This spread is due mainly to the
fact that many people have
seen a message with "Good Times" in the header. They delete the message
without reading it, thus
believing that they have saved themselves from being attacked. These
first-hand reports give a false
sense of credibility to the alert message.

There has been one confirmation of a person who received a message with
"xxx-1" in the header, but an
empty message body. Then, (in a panic, because he had heard the alert), he
checked his PC for viruses
(the first time he checked his machine in months) and found a pre-existing
virus on his machine. He
incorrectly came to the conclusion that the E-mail message gave him the virus
(this particular virus
could NOT POSSIBLY have spread via an E-mail message). This person then spread
his alert.

As of this date, there are no known viruses which can infect merely through
reading a mail message.
For a virus to spread some program must be executed. Reading a mail message
does not execute the
mail message. Yes, Trojans have been found as executable attachments to mail
messages, the most
notorious being the IBM VM Christmas Card Trojan of 1987, also the TERM MODULE
Worm
(reference CIAC Bulletin B-7) and the GAME2 MODULE Worm (CIAC Bulletin B-12).
But this is
not the case for this particular "virus" alert.

If you encounter this message being distributed on any mailing lists, simply
ignore it or send a
follow-up message stating that this is a false rumor.

>< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : >< : ><
Lisa Churchill-Roth       The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
619/453-4100, Ext. 1309             Grants Administration
xxxxxx@qm.salk.edu