From <http://www.av.ibm.com/Alert/wobbler.html>
" Sometime in May or June of 1999, someone took one of the many
existing virus hoax warnings ("Join the Crew" or "Win a Holiday",
perhaps), made a couple of tiny changes to it, and sent it out. This
particular variant of the hoax warns the reader against opening any
email with the subject "California", and says that the "very
dangerous virus" contained in such messages is called
"WOBBLER".
This warning, like all the many other variants we have seen, is false.
It has all the usual earmarks of a hoax: the virus is said to activate
when you simply open a piece of mail, it's a brand-new and very
dangerous virus, the warning is said to come from an official source
(IBM in this case, Microsoft or the FCC in others), and you're
urged to send the warning on to everyone you know. There is no
definite date in the warning (this one, like many others, says "This
information was announced yesterday morning"; something that
obviously can't be true for more than one day!). No actual contact
name or telephone number is available for confirmation. Any
warning like this, regardless of the details of supposed subject-line
or virus name, should be discarded and not passed along."
That's not a virus warning from IBM, it's a virus HOAX warning.
At 12:44 PM 9/20/00 -0500, wu wrote:
> URGENT WARNING FROM MICROSOFT
>
> 1. There is a new virus - WOBBLER. It will arrive on e-mail titled
> CALIFORNIA. IBM and AOL have announced that it is very powerful, more
>so
> than Melissa, there is no remedy. It will eat all your information on
>the
> hard drive and also destroys Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet
> Explorer. Do not open anything with this title and please pass this
> message
> on to all your contacts and anyone who uses your e-mail facility. Not
> many
> people seem to know about this yet so propagate it as fast as
> possible.
> 2. If you receive an e-mail titled "Win A. Holiday" DO NOT open it.
> It will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter to as
> many
> people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many
>people
> know about it.
>
> If you see ANY of these...please contact the Help Desk
> immediately.....Thanks
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Oct 06 2000 - 12:35:07 EDT