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When Is a Virus Not a Virus? When It's a Hoax! You may have seen them — dire warnings in email messages about this new virus or that one which will destroy all the data in your computer, melt your disk drive and perhaps cancel all your credit cards. The Budweiser virus came camouflaged as a cool screen saver, one warned. Another promised "GET MORE MONEY." Happily, according to Jim Rothfuss, the Lab’s Computer Protection Program Manager, nearly every one of these doom-and-gloom messages is a hoax. However, they seem to be proliferating lately. (And like the viruses themselves, these warnings tend to be passed along unsuspectingly, worm their way into many systems and interfere with productivity.) The warnings, Rothfuss said, are hoaxes, conceived as annoying pranks and often preying upon the fears and lack of knowledge of inexperienced computer users. The Lab’s email server scans all messages for viruses, Rothfuss said, and employees can further protect their machines by installing the latest anti-virus software. To learn about available software, visit: http://www.lbl.gov/ICSD/Security/tools/index.html To get the latest information on virus hoaxes and the like, visit any of these web sites: http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm http://www.nai.com/services/support/hoax/hoax.asp |
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