It's a hoax Was: Re: Fw: New Virus - WOBBLER

[Christian Fandt]

Hi Sandy and others,

Yet another hoax has been foisted upon an unsuspecting bunch of people.
Here's what is on the Data Fellows website. They're an outfit that deals
with a company's computer enterprise security and has to keep track of any
true viruses, hoaxes, urban legends, rumors, etc. that can be passed around
like the msg Sandy got. They provide antivirus software called F-Secure (It
used to be called F-PROT.)  To wit:

>
>                    F-Secure Hoax Warnings Pages
>
>
>                     NAME:
>                           Wobbler virus hoax
>                     ALIAS:
>                           California virus hoax
>
>
>                    In 1999 there appeared a new hoax message warning about
>Wobbler virus. This virus does not exist. But there's a joke program called
>'Joke.Win.Aloap' that is detected by Solomon as 'Wobbling Trojan'. The
hoax message looks
>like this:
>
>                     WARNING:  If you receive an e-mail with a file called
>                     California, do not open the file. The file contains
the WOBBLER
>                     virus.  This information was announced yesterday
morning from
>                     IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus,
much worse
>                     than "Melissa", and that there is NO remedy for it at
this time.
>                     Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the
reformat
>                     function from Norton Utilities causing it to
completely erase
>                     all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed
to work
>                     with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet
Explorer. It
>                     destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This
is a new,
>                     very malicious virus and not many people know about
it. Pass
>                     this warning along to EVERYONE in your address book
ASAP so that
>                     this threat may be stopped.
>
>                    There exists another version of this hoax:

   -- snip the next version for space savings --

>
>                    Please ignore these messages and don't pass them on.

The original msg Sandy quoted in his msg (which I snipped out to save
bandwidth) has similar text as the version Datafellows presented above.

I had known of a website which deals with hoaxes, etc. and checked that as
soon as I saw Sandy's msg. Its URL is:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/msubvir.htm?pid=2733&cob=home

I scanned down through the home page. Yep. Another hoax.

We'll see more of these I suspect along with an occasional REAL virus.
Possibly more frequently. So once again, to sound like a broken record,
please do not open any attachment to an email UNLESS you know for darn sure
it's from someone you had contact with to either have been pre-informed of
it or that you'd checked with to see if such attachment was indeed from
him/her.

If you're interested in further investigating any viruses as to whether
they're hoaxes or not check the above URL. It's interesting sometimes, yet
sad, that somebody plays games like this. There's a few other similar sites
I haven't bookmarked but I use this one the most. The virus info page for
Data Fellows is at:  http://www.datafellows.com/virus-info/ in case you're
interested in their listings of virii. I've NO interest in Data Fellows,
just use it as a good resource. I use Norton Antivirus myself.

At 03:32 PM 9/22/99 -0500, Sandy W5TVW wrote:
>Subject: New Virus - WOBBLER
>
>
>>Good Morning:
>>
  -- snip --

Sandy, maybe you could pass this info on to all your friends listed in the
header of your original msg to this reflector.

Have fun but don't catch a virus! (Sounds like my mother whenever I went
outside to play on a cold winter day :)

Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt,         Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY  USA      cfandt at netsync.net
        Member of Antique Wireless Association
        URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

Sponsored by the City of Tempe 

Listserver Submissions:  heath at listserv.tempe.gov
Listserver Subscription: listserv at listserv.tempe.gov - "subscribe heath 'name' 'call'"
Listserver Unsubscribe: listserv at listserv.tempe.gov - -"signoff heath"