3 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child
In a message dated 6/1/98 10:38:20 PM Central Daylight Time, chris@cybernet.co.nz writes: << > Auto-Launch attached binaries in E-Mail <-- Can we say GoodTimes? Can anyone confirm that this has indeed been fixed yet? >> It was my understanding, that the so-called GoodTimes virus was a farce, apparently aimed at specific commercial spammers. Stan
>> << > Auto-Launch attached binaries in E-Mail <-- Can we say G**dT*mes?
>> It was my understanding, that the so-called GoodTimes virus was a farce,
>> apparently aimed at specific commercial spammers.
>G**dT*mes is a hoax.
>
>I'm talking about a bug in Outlook (Express?) that will execute code when
>email messages are opened.
G**dT*mes and its ilk are hoaxes, which infect the mind of some readers,
causing Fear and Panic, and propagating around like chain letters.
But the fear-causing part is the assertion that if you read the message,
it will execute on your computer and do Bad Scary Things.
In the case of G**dT*mes, this was bogus, but it doesn't have to be.
In a passive-mail-reader environment, this won't happen,
because there's no reason your mailreader will execute commands
embedded in email, but if you've got a mail-reader that
executes scripts sent to it in the mail, you don't need the
human reader's participation to spread things,
you just need to tell the mail-reader to propagate and then
do whatever payload you've sent along as well.
The IBM Christmas-Tree Virus didn't use Fear to execute -
it promised the readers an amusing animated Christmas Tree on their terminals
(back when that was still perceived as cool :-) and if the sucker ran it,
it ran its propagation phase before or during the animation.
And back when we used Real Terminals instead of emulators,
you could send a crafty escape sequence to an HP2621 or VT100
to stash material in a register or on the screen and
get it sent back to the computer. If you made a good guess
about the environment, this was enough ("Quit mailreader, run /tmp/boom".)
There was an article in the SFChron or Oakland Trib in spring 1979
about how "hackers at Berkeley" discovered a security hole in
"the Unix, a computer made by DEC", which was really a terminal exploit.
How good is that VT100 emulator you're using to telnet to that shell account?
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yeah, that was fake.....On Tue, Jun 02, 1998 at 12:20:11AM -0400, StanSqncrs@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 6/1/98 10:38:20 PM Central Daylight Time, > chris@cybernet.co.nz writes: > > << > Auto-Launch attached binaries in E-Mail <-- Can we say GoodTimes? > > Can anyone confirm that this has indeed been fixed yet? >> > > It was my understanding, that the so-called GoodTimes virus was a farce, > apparently aimed at specific commercial spammers. GoodTimes is a hoax. I'm talking about a bug in Outlook (Express?) that will execute code when email messages are opened. -Chris