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(meteorobs) Setting the Record Straight Re: Virus Warning

[
 Just to set the record straight on the AOL4free virus(es), here's a 
semi-official
 message from a security officer at my firm. Please keep the rest of these virus
 warning messages to a minimum, and only redistribute them if you can find an
 independent confirmation of the facts. Thanks!

 PS: Who'll give me odds that viruses #2 and #3 below were both CREATED by
 AOL themselves, as a nasty response to "virus" #1??  ;>

 Lew Gramer
 owner-meteorobs@latrade.com
]

From: Earl Cole/BOSTON/SSGA
Date: 04/23/97 10:20:38 AM
Subject: Virus

As the Area Data Security Officer,, I have been asked to  pass  on the message 
below from
Data Security regarding AOL4free virus

Re:       RESEARCH INFORMATION RE: AOL4free AND AOL4free.com

Recently information has been circulating regarding AOL4free being reported as 
a virus hoax.
This is TRUE, but now another version AOL4free.com has been reported to be a 
Trojan Horse.

FACTS:
The Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Committee (CIAC) describes
AOL4free as actually 3 separate items:

1. AOL4free Macintosh program
2. AOL4free virus warning hoax
3. AOL4free.com Trojan Horse

#1 gives free, illegal access to America OnLine.

#2 is the message that warns of a virus infected e-mail message.  This is a 
hoax.

#3 This is a program that appears to create fraudulent AOL accounts (in DOS) 
but instead it is a DOS
batch file that runs the "DOS DELTREE" command on the C:\directory of a 
DOS/Windows machine.

An e-mail label will not do any harm to your PC, but the AOL4free.com e-mail 
attachment will proceed
to wipe out all of the files on your hard drive when  activated.  AOL4free.com 
as a Trojan Horse is 933
bytes long.  If you get it do not run it!  Do not double click on the attachment
.  If the program
starts executing, quickly pressing Control-C will save some of your files.

Corporate Data Security is asking you to please pass this information along to 
all those people who
should be aware of the hoax and this threat to our systems.