Re: WARNING vIRuS!

At 11:21 AM 8/31/96 -0500, kickboxer  ingnoring the "clueserver refused by
host" messages wrote:
>        There is a new and VERY dangerous virus called the HAZ-MAT virus!
>it fucks up the sectors on your hd, and really messes up the partition
>tables.  It does this once a week, picking a random time to do it.  99.9% of
>virus scanners and other antivirus programs will not recognize it, for it is
>a totally new strain, using a never before seen code.... Be warned!  The
>HAZ-MAT virus usually resides in JPG, and GIF files... once the files are
>viewed, the virus takes effect.
>scan all images upon download!

This is the clueless kind of crap I expect pitched to AOL users and upper
level management.

GIF and JPEGs contain *NO* executable code.  You cannot get viruses from
them.  You obviously have no clue as to what the hell you are talking about.

The only way that you could obtain the effects described above is with Black
Magic and/or Voodoo.  (And not even then.)

I remember a similar hoax going around about 3-4 years ago about viruses in
image files.  I guess nothing on the net is ever forgotten entirely.
Especially the urban legends and bullshit.
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Alan Olsen writes:

> This is the clueless kind of crap I expect pitched to AOL users and
> upperlevel management.

> GIF and JPEGs contain *NO* executable code.  You cannot get viruses
> from them.  You obviously have no clue as to what the hell you are 
> talking about. 

> The only way that you could obtain the effects described above is 
> with Black Magic and/or Voodoo.  (And not even then.)

I don't want to restart the jpg-virus flame war again, and this 
particular story is likely completely bogus, but I should point out 
that most complicated software, including jpeg viewers, has
undiscovered bugs lurking about.  It is also not particularly
difficult to find a garbage input file for most sloppily written
programs which bombs the program into branching into one of its
data buffers.  Indeed, it wasn't so long ago that you could get
httpd to put crap on its own stack by feeding it an excessively
long URL. 

So I would certainly not be surprised if someone managed to 
construct a .jpg file which would do nasty things to ones machine
if loaded with a specific viewer, and give an error message when 
loaded by other software.  

If the viewer was a widely used one, and the .jpg was posted on 
Usenet with an alluring title, one could probably do quite a bit
of damage before people got wise.  

Not a virus in the traditional sense, but a fairly common way
to attack complicated operating systems and applications. 

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $