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Red Alert hoax
This is a warning of a nasty hoax that has been distributed on several mailing lists and in usenet news. The hoax message is falsely attributed to Mikko.Hypponen@F-Secure.com from F-PROT Professional Support.
This false warning urges people to stay off Microsoft's home page and not to use Microsoft Internet Explorer, because the 'Microsoft home page is possibly infected by a virus'. This is nonsense. If you have seen this warning, please pass on this message, and please do not redistribute the original warning any more.
The origins on this nasty hoax is as of yet unknown. The original hoax warning is quoted here in full:
Red Alert for anybody using Microsoft's Internet Explorer as their web browser.
This came in on the virus forum at the University of Hamburg from a fairly reliable source: Mikko H. Hypponen (Mikko.Hypponen@F-Secure.com) in Finland. (F-Secure is an anti-virus company)
The first indication that something was amiss was when the computer of an MIS professional friend of Mikko's was completely wiped -- including BIOS and CMOS -- on 11-20-96. It took a great deal of arguing with Microsoft until 11-22-96 (logged at 0930 hours) when they finally admitted something was wrong and took "their homepage into their lab."
Mikko's first report was at 11:13 on 11-22-96. By 13:17 on 11-22-96 the following message was received:
Okay, it's official (last conversation with techs at 1200 hrs, 11-22-96, virus confirmed) Western Digital and Microsoft confirm that a new virus is on the web and they cannot isolate it. The only thing they know for sure is that it completely wipes out a computer. As of this time, they cannot determine how best to get rid of the thing once it is in your system.
[irrelevant "in-joke" cut]
They are recommending that until they can isolate it (it appears to be coming from several locations) you just stay off the web. This sounds like a trojan rather than a virus, but it is extremely destructive nonetheless.
Unless you can filter addresses so your webbrowser will not go to Microsoft's home page, stay off Microsoft's home page until further notice. (As Mikko post updates, I'll forward them.)
Incidentally, Mikko and his friend *were* frequent users of Microsoft's Web browser.
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