Understanding the Hoax Problem

In addition to actual viruses, you have to contend with virus hoaxes, those alarmist e-mail warnings about the newly discovered or most devastating virus ever found. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these hoaxes circulating around the Internet at any given time.

Hoaxes are a serious problem. Users waste time and bandwidth when they forward virus hoaxes to friends and family. Hoaxes also spread misinformation, and a cracker can use a hoax to goad a user into making a change to his system or even running a Trojan program posing as a worm remover or system patch.

A Trojan program may also arrive in your e-mail inbox attached to a virus hoax. To protect yourself, the best thing you can do is to take the time to educate yourself and learn how to identify a hoax and where you can go to look up the facts.

Identifying a hoax

Most hoaxes have a few traits in common that should tip you off that something isn’t kosher. Some traits to watch for include:

• Claims to be from an authority or credible expert

• Urges you to forward the e-mail to everyone you know

• Uses technical sounding language to give it credibility

The following is an example of a virus hoax called the good times virus, and it demonstrates some of these attributes. When it first hit the Internet in 1994, panicked users forwarded so many copies of this hoax that mail servers crashed at many companies and ISPs. Even network administrators fell for this and forwarded it to all of their own personnel.

The FCC released a warning last Wednesday concerning a matter  of major importance to any regular user of the InterNet. 

First tip-off, the hoax uses the FCC for credibility. The FCC has nothing to do with computer viruses or security. If an agency actually did release a warning it should have a link to the organization’s Web page containing the actual info.

Apparently, a new computer virus has been engineered by a user  of America Online that is unparalleled in its destructive  capability. Other, more well-known viruses such as Stoned,  Airwolf and Michaelangelo, pale in comparison to the prospects  of this newest creation by a warped mentality. What makes this virus so terrifying, said the FCC, is the fact  that no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be  infected. It can be spread through the existing e-mail systems  of the InterNet. Once a computer is infected, one of several  things can happen. If the computer contains a hard drive, that  will most likely be destroyed. If the program is not stopped,  the computer’s processor will be placed in an nth-complexity  infinite binary loop - which can severely damage the processor  if left running that way too long. Unfortunately, most novice  computer users will not realize what is happening until it is  far too late. 

Plenty of nightmarish, technical-sounding horrors to go around there, never mind the fact that it’s all gibberish. Other versions of this hoax also urged people to send the e-mail to everyone they knew.

On The Web 

If you receive a virus warning, the best thing you can do is research it before you send it to anyone. There are two great sites that I recommend for this purpose.

The first is www.vmyths.com. This is a great site that debunks all of the hysteria surrounding computer viruses. Best of all, this site actually is maintained by an expert.

The second site is http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org maintained by the Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) of the Department of Energy. Hoaxbusters is a clearinghouse of information about hoaxes and isn’t limited to virus hoaxes.