The "Good Times" virus is apparently a hoax that is being spread across
the Internet. Attached are excerpts from a message sent by the Department
of Energy's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory . . .

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Alison Starling
aks at u.washington.edu
University of Washington
Center for AIDS and STDs
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THE "Good Times" VIRUS IS AN URBAN LEGEND

In the early part of December, CIAC started to receive information requests
about a supposed "virus" which could be contracted via America OnLine, simply
by reading a message. The following is the message that CIAC received:

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| Here is some important information. Beware of a file called Goodtimes. |
| |
| Happy Chanukah everyone, and be careful out there. There is a virus on |
| America Online being sent by E-Mail. If you get anything called "Good |
| Times", DON'T read it or download it. It is a virus that will erase your |
| hard drive. Forward this to all your friends. It may help them a lot. |
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THIS IS A HOAX. Upon investigation, CIAC has determined that this message
originated from both a user of America Online and a student at a university
at approximately the same time, and it was meant to be a hoax.

This rumor has been spreading very widely. This spread is due mainly to the
fact that many people have seen a message with "Good Times" in the header.
They delete the message without reading it, thus believing that they have
saved themselves from being attacked. These first-hand reports give a false
sense of credibility to the alert message.

As of this date, there are no known viruses which can infect merely through
reading a mail message. For a virus to spread some program must be executed.
Reading a mail message does not execute the mail message. Yes, Trojans have
been found as executable attachments to mail messages, the most notorious
being the IBM VM Christmas Card Trojan of 1987, also the TERM MODULE Worm
(reference CIAC Bulletin B-7) and the GAME2 MODULE Worm (CIAC Bulletin B-12).
But this is not the case for this particular "virus" alert.

If you encounter this message being distributed on any mailing lists, simply
ignore it or send a follow-up message stating that this is a false rumor.