Really Bad Evil Virus Warning!!!! (General Discussion)

Really Bad Evil Virus Warning!!!! // General Discussion

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andras

Sep 29, 2001, 3:52pm
The Pluperfect Virus
By Cybersatirist Bob Hirschfeld of bobsfridge.com
(This column originally appeared in The Washington Post's Outlook section )

A new computer virus is spreading throughout the Internet, and it is far
more insidious than last week's Chernobyl menace. Named Strunkenwhite after
the authors of a classic guide to good writing, it returns e-mail messages
that have grammatical or spelling errors. It is deadly accurate in its
detection abilities, unlike the dubious spell checkers that come with word
processing programs.


The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout corporate America,
which has become used to the typos, misspellings, missing words and mangled
syntax so acceptable in cyberspace. The CEO of LoseItAll.com, an Internet
startup, said the virus has rendered him helpless. "Each time I tried to
send one particular e-mail this morning, I got back this error message:
'Your dependent clause preceding your independent clause must be set off by
commas, but one must not precede the conjunction.' I threw my laptop across
the room."

A top executive at a telecommunications and long-distance company,
10-10-10-10-10-10-123, said: "This morning, the same damned e-mail kept
coming back to me with a pesky notation claiming I needed to use a pronoun's
possessive case before a gerund. With the number of e-mails I crank out each
day, who has time for proper grammar? Whoever created this virus should have
their programming fingers broken."

A broker at Begg, Barow and Steel said he couldn't return to the "bad, old"
days when he had to send paper memos in proper English. He speculated that
the hacker who created Strunkenwhite was a "disgruntled English major who
couldn't make it on a trading floor. When you're buying and selling on
margin, I don't think it's anybody's business if I write that 'i meetinged
through the morning, then cinched the deal on the cel phone while bareling
down the xway.' "

If Strunkenwhite makes e-mailing impossible, it could mean the end to a
communication revolution once hailed as a significant timesaver. A study of
1,254 office workers in Leonia, N.J., found that e-mail increased employees'
productivity by 1.8 hours a day because they took less time to formulate
their thoughts. (The same study also found that they lost 2.2 hours of
productivity because they were e-mailing so many jokes to their spouses,
parents and stockbrokers.)

Strunkenwhite is particularly difficult to detect because it doesn't come as
an e-mail attachment (which requires the recipient to open it before it
becomes
active). Instead, it is disguised within the text of an e-mail entitled
"Congratulations on your pay raise." The message asks the recipient to
"click here to find out about how your raise effects your pension." The use
of "effects" rather than the grammatically correct "affects" appears to be
an inside joke from Strunkenwhite's mischievous creator.

The virus also has left government e-mail systems in disarray. Officials at
the Office of Management and Budget can no longer transmit electronic
versions of federal regulations because their highly technical language
seems to run afoul of Strunkenwhite's dictum that "vigorous writing is
concise." The White House speechwriting office reported that it had received
the same message, along with a caution to avoid phrases such as "the truth
is. . ." and "in fact. . . ."

Home computer users also are reporting snafus, although an e-mailer who used
the word "snafu" said she had come to regret it.

The virus can have an even more devastating impact if it infects an entire
network. A cable news operation was forced to shut down its computer system
for several hours when it discovered that Strunkenwhite had somehow
infiltrated its TelePrompTer software, delaying newscasts and leaving news
anchors nearly tongue-tied as they wrestled with proper sentence structure.

There is concern among law enforcement officials that Strunkenwhite is a
harbinger of the increasingly sophisticated methods hackers are using to
exploit the vulnerability of business's reliance on computers. "This is one
of the most complex and invasive examples of computer code we have ever
encountered. We just can't imagine what kind of devious mind would want to
tamper with e-mails to create this burden on communications," said an FBI
agent who insisted on speaking via the telephone out of concern that trying
to e-mail his comments could leave him tied up for hours.

Meanwhile, bookstores and online booksellers reported a surge in orders for
Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style."

cozmo

Sep 29, 2001, 6:16pm
lol hehe haha....this IS a joke, right?

[View Quote]

mike zimmer

Sep 30, 2001, 1:36pm
LOL, I sure home so...

"10-10-10-10-10-10-123"

Is that a cheap rip off of 10-10-220?

[View Quote]

john viper

Oct 1, 2001, 8:48am
If you remember, the first of the 10-10's was 10-123, and then for some
reason they tacked on an extra 10 making it 10-10-123, and then all the
other 10-10's came around...

Funny virus ;-)

-JV

[View Quote] > LOL, I sure home so...
>
> "10-10-10-10-10-10-123"
>
> Is that a cheap rip off of 10-10-220?
>
[View Quote]
--
John Viper (#296714)
jviper at jtsoft.net
http://www.jtsoft.net

"Life on Earth may be expensive, but it does include a free trip around
the sun..." -anonymous

agent1

Oct 1, 2001, 11:46am
If I know what I'm talking about, dialing 10-10-whatever changes which long distance company you're using. It only applies for that one call, though...

-Agent1

[View Quote]

goober king

Oct 1, 2001, 2:31pm
Actually, it was 10-321, then 10-10-321, then 10-10-220...

[View Quote] > If you remember, the first of the 10-10's was 10-123, and then for some
> reason they tacked on an extra 10 making it 10-10-123, and then all the
> other 10-10's came around...
>
> Funny virus ;-)
>
> -JV
>
[View Quote]
--
Goober King
Fountain of (Junk) Knowledge...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

sw chris

Oct 1, 2001, 4:44pm
Screw it. Just go with IDT. $.05 cents a minute all day, every day. :)
--
SW Chris
Eagle Scout, Philosopher, Peacemaker, and... Kung Fu Master?
http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html

[View Quote]

captain mad mike

Oct 20, 2001, 1:47am
Oh my God! This is the end of the world!

Dang, I should see if I can write one like that for my first VB project and
release it throughout the Internet. I'll set it to infect only corporate
servers of companies I like so every e-mail they send is in perfect grammar
and they don't have to worry about spell checking and then they'll thank me
and send me free stuff :D new AMD Athlon XP 1800+ here I come! hehe.

I can only dream......


--
Captain MAD Mike
-Governor, PC Addict, Odd Man

[View Quote]

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