Be Wary of Warnings (w Cartoon)

[Garrett Lambert]

There is hoax going around in the form of a well-written, polite letter apologizing for spreading a virus that has attacked the writer's e-mail address box. The advice is to delete a file in order to prevent damage. That file is, in fact, required by the Windows operating system, so you are, in effect, infecting yourself as per the Irish virus below. Always check Norton virus site before acting on such advice. (www.symantec.com)

Cheers, Garrett

<IMG SRC="http://www3.telus.net/GLI/IrishVirus.jpg">
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[Dave Arbuckle]

I agree with your intent, Garrett. But, the only virus hoax I'm aware of that fits your description is the jdbgmgr.exe hoax, the one with the teddy bear icon.

This file is, in fact, not required by the Windows operating system, any version. It is the Microsoft Registrar Debugger for Java, and the people who need it are Microsoft Visual J++ v1.1 developers.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com...file.hoax.html is the specific Symantec page for it. Microsoft KnowledgeBase Q322993 discusses restoring it.


Cute graphic!

Dave

[Aaron Koehl]

For anyone's info:

This is actually a very popular type of virus, but very different
from malicious code. It relies on the fact that a user is untrained--
such is called social engineering, a marketing technique that
entices a user to compromise his or her own system or security.

I won't go into the boring details, but just beware of any emails, chat
room messages, popup ads, pictures, and the like that ask you to
delete files, divulge passwords, "Click here because you have a
virus", "Your system is insecure, click here", etc.

_Aaron_