-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.computerbits.com/archive/19990300/virus.htm <A HREF="http://www.computerbits.com/archive/19990300/virus.htm">The Good Times Virus: An urban legend for the I </A> ----- The Good Times Virus An urban legend for the Internet ... by Angella K. Foret Good Times will re-write your hard drive. It will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace-field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to play. It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead fish in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work. Good Times will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card. It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of Good Times: it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear. It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. Good Times will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of methanphetamine in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase grade schoolers with your new snowblower. Listen to me. Good Times does not exist. It cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this message to everyone in the world. Tell your friends, tell your family. If anyone else sends me another E-mail about this fake Good Times Virus, I will turn hating them into a religion. I will do things to them that would make a horse head in your bed look like Easter Sunday brunch. - Anonymous Legends Urban and Suburban The urban legend has been around as long the suburbs. Remember the story about the nice folks who would drug you and steal your kidneys? How about the high-beam flashing gang initiation rite? Then there are the old stand-bys, of course: the killer with a hook for a hand terrorizing teens at drive-ins, the murderer who calls the babysitter from the upstairs phone. Let us not forget the ultimate horror story that has yet to be disproved: the Millennium Bug, or The Day the Earth Will Stand Still. It was only a matter time before urban legends made their way from our coffee tables to our desktops. They have morphed into messages of technological doom, scaring new computer and Internet users with their prophecies of electronic destruction. They start as friendly warnings passed from friend to friend, but are the warnings valid? Spreading the Word Computer viruses have been around nearly as long as computers, but virus warnings took on a new dimension with the advent of e-mail. As the Internet became a global reality and users began exchanging files across modem lines, the possibility of virus transmissions loomed. Internet users were warned this possibility existed and companies like Norton and Symantec flourished with their anti-virus programs. The first widespread Internet hoax was the "Good Times" virus message. Originating in 1991, the Good Times virus has traveled around the world numerous times and has frightened many a new user into forwarding the message on to friends and family, who passed it on to their friends and family, who passed it on... well, you get the idea. The Good Times virus message reads: Here is some important information. Beware of a file called Good Times. 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. The FCC recently released a warning concerning a matter of major importance to any regular user of the Internet: Apparently, a new computer virus that is unparalleled in its destructive capability has been engineered by a user of America Online. Other, more well-known viruses such as Stoned, Airwolf, and Michelangelo pale in comparison. What makes this virus so terrifying, said the FCC, is the fact that no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected. It can be spread through Internet e-mail. "Once a computer is infected, one of several things can happen. If the computer contains a hard drive, that will most likely be destroyed. If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop -- which can severely damage the processor if left running that way too long. Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is happening until it is far too late." This message can't be believed for several reasons. First of all, it is impossible to get a virus from simply opening an email: This would be akin to catching a cold from reading the Journal of the AMA. Most browsers simply display the text of the message; no other program is required to run it. However, you can get a virus by opening, saving and/or downloading an attachment or file from the Internet. Second, what is an "nth complexity infinite binary loop"? I'm sure someone out there who is even nerdier than me knows the answer, but this mysterious loop is not something of which I am personally afraid. Besides, if you shut off your computer at night, like most people do, wouldn't that be a moot point? Third, the message refers to the FCC as the commanding authority. In truth, the FCC is not involved in the issuance of virus warnings; this task belongs to the Computer Incident Advisory Capability of the U.S. Department of Energy (CIAC). Other branches of the government -- including a division called NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability (NASIRC) -- conduct internal investigations and share their findings with the CIAC. The response to the Good Times virus threw the Internet into an uproar. So many people forwarded the message that it became self-propagating. Perhaps the message's circulatory route is the nth complexity infinite binary loop? One anonymous writer, weary of receiving the same message 16 times, penned the response at the beginning of this article. Unfortunately, the response hasn't received the same exposure as the original bogus message. Variations on a Theme Many computer virus hoax messages are simply a new twist on an old gimmick. For example, millions of Internet users received the Bill Gates Hoax, in which Bill Gates, president of Microsoft, Inc., promised $1,000 in cash and a free copy of Windows 95 or 98 if the recipient would pass the message on to everyone they knew. Several months later, the Walt Disney Hoax followed. Claiming to be from Walt Disney, Jr., the message promised $5,000 cash and/or a trip to Disneyland for those who passed the message on. Still another message, purportedly from Nike, pledged $120 gift certificates for Nike apparel to participants. My personal favorite is the "Internet Clean-Up Day." According to this message, the Internet must be shut down annually to "eliminate dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allow(ing) for a better working and faster Internet." At one minute after midnight on some obscure date ("the time least likely to interfere with ongoing work"), "five powerful Internet search engines situated around the world will search the Internet and delete any data that they find." The message goes on to request that you, cautious Internet user, "protect your valuable data from deletion" by disconnecting your modem, server, disks and hard drives from any connections to the Internet and to "refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in any way." Aside from assuring someone of the perfect time to access a relatively clear Internet (where is everybody?), this message is bogus and serves no useful purpose. After all, if everyone disconnected their servers and modems, where would "the Internet" be? On some remote planet, one presumes, or possibly warehoused in Bill Gates's massive underground garage. One can imagine the Merry Maids dusting the gophers and sweeping the ftp sites. Sometimes, a Kernel of Truth That said, it should be noted that some Internet virus hoaxes do have a basis in fact. Perhaps the best-known incident is the AOL4FREE program. In 1994, a Yale student created a program that would allow Macintosh users to install and use AOL accounts on their computers without access charges. The student was prosecuted after AOL discovered the theft, but at a price: AOL estimates it lost $40-70,000 in revenue due to the distribution of the program. In an attempt to recover from the fiasco, AOL warned that anyone caught using the program or unauthorized AOL accounts would be prosecuted. A few na‹ve computer users turned this simple warning into a virus warning, claiming that, among other things, the program would "erase your hard drive" and "delete your disk" if you read it (presumably triggered by the motion of your eyeballs). A few months later, a real Trojan Horse, called AOL4FREE.COM, was released.While the original AOL4FREE program was designed for Macintosh users, this program was a compiled DOS program. Upon execution, it would run a DELTREE command, essentially deleting your entire C:\ drive. Keep in mind, however, that this program was an executable program that required you to actually open and run it. How Do I Know? How do you know if the message you received is a real virus? There are several ways of verifying the authenticity of a virus message. 1) Where did the message come from? The CIAC says you can safely ignore any e-mail virus warnings from Grandma, or Joe in Accounting. Authentic virus warnings will originate from credible sources, such as your company's system operator, your Internet service provider, or the CIAC. Is it digitally signed? Are there a lot of EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! AND CAPITAL LETTERS?!!! 2) It is impossible to get a virus simply from reading an email. If you receive a message claiming that you will get the virus if you open a message, ignore it. Better yet, pass on a quick and witty reply. 3) Every Internet user should have a good, updated anti-virus program, such as Norton Anti-Virus, Symantec or McAfee. These anti-virus programs will scan all of your disks, downloads and email attachments before opening them. They will also scan your hard drive periodically and check for viruses. 4) If you are unsure whether or not a virus is present on your computer, on a floppy or as an attachment to an email, do not open it. Delete it immediately, or have your virus program scan it. 5) Check out some of the more popular virus update pages, such as Symantec, Dr. Solomon's Virus Center, or Data Fellows. Win A Holiday!!! I recently received the "Win A Holiday" virus warning, which is another twist on the "Join the Crew" virus message. The message warns that the virus will attach itself to my computer components (wow, I'd like to see that!) and render them useless. The message advised me to "...practice cautionary measures and forward this to all your online friends ASAP." Needless to say, I didn't. Instead, I wrote out a quick and easy reply to everyone the recipient list, as well as everyone on the extensive forwarded header list and everyone in my own address book. The message went out to a total of 71 people! The only way to put a stop to the nuisance of Internet virus hoaxes and chain letters is to respond accordingly. Send out an abbreviated version of this message or create one of your own. Do not forward any virus messages you receive - if you're not sure, send it to the CIAC, your sysop or ISP, or check out a virus update page. Your friends and family will thank you for it, and I won't have to make a mess with the horse's head. About the Author When Star Trek: Next Generation isn't on, Angella K. Foret creates fabulous Web pages and teaches people how. E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Search our archives: You can also get a listing of articles by Angella K. Foret If you need instructions for our search engine, go to our main search page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This article was originally published in the March 1999 issue of Computer Bits magazine, and is copyright © 1999 by Bitwise Productions, Inc., Forest Grove, OR, (503) 359-9107. All rights reserved ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. 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