Adventures in Hoax Email Utopia

ChickenSoup

ChickenSoup

Banned
If everyone checked snopes, none of these stupid emails would be going around.

For everyone else's benefit, this is the email:

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING:

You should be alert during the next days:

Do not open any message with an attached file called "Invitation " regardless of who sent it, It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard disc of your computer.


This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list, that is why you should send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.

If you receive a mail called "invitation" , though sent by a friend, do not open it and shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced, it has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.

This virus was discovered by McAfee a few days ago, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept

SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW ,

COPY THIS E-MAIL AND SEND! IT TO YOUR FRIENDS

AND REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US
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And here is the snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/invitation.asp

End of story.



(this ends the Chicken Soup public service announcement.)

For any mods who are wondering what the point of this thread is, it's not my rantings, it's my posting of a hoax email with the related snopes article so no one will start freaking out over a non-existent virus.
 
I woulda known it was a hoax the moment I read "it has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever."

Mostly because they aren't the most reliable source... Actually come to think of it, I wouldn't consider most of what they say as reliable. But that's beside the point.

It would be much more effective to claim a more reliable and trusted source like Symantec or Trend-Microsystems who, y'know, actually work on trying to improve the safety and security of their customers PCs.


Now, if this gets widespread I know I can count on three definite forwards into my inbox... Maybe I'll just do a little preemptive emailing myself. ;)
 
XionTawa said:
HAHAHAHAHAHA...I hate those...NO VIRUS CAN CRASH YOUR COMPUTER BEYOND REPAIR!!!
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It actually used to be possible back in the olden days when you could overload a hard drive and cause it to kill itself. OOh, and several motherboards have interfaces for allowing programs to overwrite the bios rom, luckily I don't think there are any widespread ones that brick your computer :P
 
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vibrokatana said:
Or better yet, run an OS that is immune to 99.5% of viruses.
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It's not so much immune to 99.5% of the viruses out there, as there's just not enough of those OS's out there for the virus writers to bother writing viruses for them.

Consider this, there is now a virus aimed at the MAC, which is built based on a flavor of *NIX these days.
 
C$, I know your pain. Dorkelf's mom believes every single one of those that comes across her inbox, and forwards them all to us.

You think she'd start checking Snopes, since I keep sending her their articles on the relevant hoax...

Kidan said:
It's not so much immune to 99.5% of the viruses out there, as there's just not enough of those OS's out there for the virus writers to bother writing viruses for them.

Consider this, there is now a virus aimed at the MAC, which is built based on a flavor of *NIX these days.
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I assume you're referring to the proof-of-concept virus? Yes, but is classified as a very low threat, and doesn't really DO much.

And "not enough computers" may not be the whole story. The programmer who made it included some commentary in the code itself. It's a bit vague, but it appears to suggest that the thing was a major pain simply to write...
 
MaidMirawyn said:
C$, I know your pain. Dorkelf's mom believes every single one of those that comes across her inbox, and forwards them all to us.

You think she'd start checking Snopes, since I keep sending her their articles on the relevant hoax...


I assume you're referring to the proof-of-concept virus? Yes, but is classified as a very low threat, and doesn't really DO much.

And "not enough computers" may not be the whole story. The programmer who made it included some commentary in the code itself. It's a bit vague, but it appears to suggest that the thing was a major pain simply to write...
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The difference is the security model, with unix everything is seperated into little cells where you cant get access to other cells. On my webserver for example apache runs under it's own user, mysql under another, each web client has their own jailed home directory. Even if they do anything I will simply restore one of my daily backups :P

In windows the default model is to allow everything, vista sorta fixed some of it but they took the path of allowing everything but cutting off access to some. Since you can't predict 100% what will be degrading or exploited in the future there are inevitably holes that will never be filled up and covered.
 
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