Syndicate: Penpal Greetings is a Hoax, not a virus

[Otto Stolz <Otto.Stolz@uni-konstanz.de>]

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Hello,

again, horror-stories about a non-existant threat have been widely
circulated. Any message of this kind will uneccessarily cost experts'
working-time and novices' night-rest -- and has done so, already.
This message is addressed to those who have related the alert, unreflected,
to me.

I urge everybody to invest a few moments' thought before forwarding
any messag of this sort. Every computer-literate should be able to see
that the modus operandi described thusly
> This message appears to be a friendly letter [...], but by the time
> you read the letter, it is too late. The "trojan horse" virus will have
> already infected the boot sector of your hard drive, [...]
is technically impossible.

Facts are:
- By merly reading an E-mail letter, no virus can be propagated, as
  no additional program code is executed. Either, you had the virus already,
  or you won't have it after reading. Period.
- To attract a virus, or to suffer from a Troian Horse, you have to execute
  some program code brought to you from external sources. In the context
  of e-mail (and news), this code can only come via an ATTACHMENT.
  In particular, MS-Word formatted texts may contain Word-Macro viruses;
  if your MUA (or news-reader) is configured to launch Word and pass the
  attachment to it, you may be in trouble.

For Readers at the UniversitÅ t Konstanz:
   â? ber dieses Thema gibt es einen Artikel in der neuesten Nummer unserer
   KURZ-Mitteilungen. Sie kšnnen ihn auch im WWW lesen:
     <http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ZE/RZ/KM/147/147-02.html>
   Was Sie gegen Makro-Viren tun sollten, steht in der vorletzten und
   vorvorletzten Nummer der KURZ-Mitteilungen und im WWW unter:
     <http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ZE/RZ/KM/145/145-12.html>
     <http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ZE/RZ/KM/146/146-06.html>
   Wir halten diese Informationen nicht gerade geheim :-)

For English-speaking readers:
   Read more on this particular hoax in the following WWW pages:
     <http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html#penpal>
     <http://www.Europe.DataFellows.com/v-descs/penpal.htm>
     <http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/data/penpal.html>
   Read more about e-mail hoaxes in:
     <http://www.drsolomon.com/vircen/hoax.html>
     <http://www.kumite.com/myths/>
     <http://www.Europe.DataFellows.com/news/hoax.htm>
     <http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html>
     <http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html>
     <http://www.mcafee.com/support/hoax.html>
   Read more about macro viruses in:
     <http://www.drsolomon.com/scripts/search/macrovir.idq?>
     <http://www.Europe.DataFellows.com/macro/>
     <http://www.avp.ch/avpve/macrovrs.htm>

Don't worry, but be prepared!

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz