INTERNET WARNING: virus or hoax

[timothy l dodge]

Tim McDaniel wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 6 Nov 1996, dennis grace <amazing at mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> > Subject: Fwd: INTERNET WARNING: virus or hoax
> >
> > Greetings, Cousins,
> ...
> > >The latest hoax or a really bad virus?  I thought i'd pass this on
> > >since I wasn't sure. ...
> > >> DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF EXTENSION !!!
> 
> I strongly thank the originators and those passing it along for the
> dose of skepticism.  Many warnings passed along nowadays are urban
> legends.  (E.g., the "Good Times virus" warning uses nonsensical terms
> and simply couldn't function like that.)  It's good to take such
> warnings with a grain of salt pending verification.  (You certainly
> may, for prudence's sake, follow them just in case, but it's best to
> keep an open mind for new evidence.)
> 
> I recall reading that PKZIP300 is indeed a bad program that destroys
> disk contents.  Unfortunately, I have no citations.  If I were not
> feeling lazy 8-), I'd check out the FAQ list for the Usenet newsgroup
> alt.folklore.urban; I'm 80% sure it would have a few lines on this.
> 
> --
>                              Tim McDaniel
>                         Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com
>     mcdaniel at mcdaniel.dallas.tx.us is wrong tool.  Never use this.The aforementioned PKUNZIP version 3.0 virus is old news.  There probably 
will never be a version 3.0 because of this.  If you see anything saying 
it's PKUNZIP version 3.0 no matter the file name know it to be a trojan 
horse that's been out there about 4-6 months.  Any responsible site 
administrator would have purged his server of any downloadable sets of 
this long ago or as soon as it has come to his/her attention.

Aergoth of the Shire of Hammerhold