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Christmas Greetings

Yahoo Message Number: 862
This card is for all of you Country Coach owners! We wish each and every one of you a Blessed Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Candy and Dale Hollick

Re: Christmas Greetings

Reply #1 –
Yahoo Message Number: 863
Dear Candy and Dale,

Please respond if you REALLY DID send this Christmas message. Unfortunately, one has to be extremely cautious about executable files because of virus reasons. George Hayles (1998 Intrigue).
PLEASE NOTE: Please use the gch@... email address for all future correspondence to both Gini and George. Mail specifically for Gini can be addressed to haylesg@... since Gini monitors that account for messages.

Re: Christmas Greetings

Reply #2 –
Yahoo Message Number: 872
Dear Candy and Dale,

After receiving your confirmation email that you really did sent the Christmas Message to this CC Group, I got up my nerve and opened it. It was wonderful. I am sorry that I had to bring this negative message to what was most certainly good wishes from you kind folks to all of us on this forum. Thank you for thinking of us.
Just so the rest of you on the list don't think I have gone off the deep end I decided it was appropriate to include the following warning notice I got from a personal friend in France, a Brit who is also a fellow motorhomer and loves his sojourns to the US in his American Eagle. Again, sorry to have to be the bearer of all this Bah Humbug! but considering what could happen to us here on the forum if a virus was sent, I decided to err on the side of caution. FYI (see below) George Hayles (1998 Intrigue at Pelican Lake Motorhome Resort in Naples, FL)

COMPUTER VIRUS ALERT

Computer security companies are warning of an e-mail virus bearing Christmas and New Year tidings that will cripple Windows-based PCs if opened. The virus -- variously called Reeezak.A, Zacker.C or Maldal.C -- appeared in the United Kingdom early Wednesday morning, according to both Islandia, N.Y.-based Computer Associates and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Network Associates. Infected messages carry a subject line of "Happy New Year!" and have a "Christmas.exe" attachment, which displays the icon of a Flash multimedia file. The malicious payload includes some Christmas-themed animation to distract a user from the file's serious contents, said Vincent Gullotto, director of Network Associates' AVERT antivirus center.

The program's most damaging act is to delete all the files in a computer's Windows system directory. This will completely disable the PC until the operating system can be reinstalled, Gullotto told UPI. The virus will also attempt to delete several varieties of antivirus software programs, he said.
Reeezak also attempts to send itself to every person in a victim's Microsoft Outlook address book, said Ian Hameroff, Computer Associates' director of antivirus solutions. The virus could also try to disable several keys on an infected computer's keyboard, Hameroff told UPI. Reeezak's holiday references are typical of the social engineering tricks used to get people to unwittingly spread viruses, Hameroff said, and should serve as a reminder for people to take computer security seriously. "It's better to take a few minutes to make sure someone meant to send you an e-mail than to take hours restoring your computer files," Hameroff said. Both Hameroff and Gullotto said some antivirus programs might be able to spot Reeezak using predictive software methods called heuristics. A far more certain method of preventing infection is updating a program's virus definition files -- both Network Associates and Computer Associates have added Reeezak to their products. Gullotto said if someone accidentally opens the virus, immediately shutting down the computer could prevent some damage, although system files would probably still need to be restored. What precautions do you take to prevent your PC from being infected by a computer virus?

(Thanks to UPI Science News Writer Scott Burnell)

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