The ElfBowl and Frogpult Virus Hoax (http://still
The ElfBowl and Frogpult Virus Hoax
There are hundreds of hoaxes that say avoid some person, file, or message
because they may deliver a virus (or trojan) and then say to forward the
warning. If you have been reading these pages, you should recognize anything
fitting this pattern as a hoax.
Although, the following should be obvious as a hoax, this hoax is being
circulated widely. Both ElfBowl and Frogpult are widely used games. We have seen
no instances where these programs are infected. It’s certainly possible that
eventually some joker will infect one of these programs and post it on some site
but it should still be safe to download these programs from the well-known
download sites (visit our links page for a link to Simtel). Here is the most
common version of this hoax:
The Royal Bank of Scotland have issued a
virus warning regarding 2 small games files
that are doing the rounds at the moment.
These files are FROGPULT.EXE and ELFBOWL.EXE
which you may or may not have seen recently.
The hidden virus is said to be on a timer
and due to kick in on Christmas Day
reputedly to crash your hard drive if it is
stored there.
TAKE NO CHANCES, delete these files from
your hard drive and also from within your
E-MAIL messages if they have been sent to
you.
Please inform anyone else that you think may
have had these files and your Sytem
Administrator if you are on a network.
Some versions of the above hoax mention only ElfBowl and a number of versions
mention some other organization rather than the ‘Royal Bank’.
Even though we haven’t seen infected versions of these programs, it’s quite
possible that any program can be infected. If someone downloads one of these and
has a virus active in their system, it’s quite likely that the program will be
infected if they email it to you. This is but one more reason that we advise you
to never accept any programs emailed to you from your friends , instead if you
want these programs, visit a recognized download site and get the program from
there.
Reminder about buggy programs
There are many legitimate programs (no virus or trojan), that may cause you to
suspect your system has been infected by a virus or trojan. (Some programs
simply don’t run reliably on some PCs and cause system damage that may make your
PC behave oddly or crash.) Simply running a virus scanner, will not allow you to
be sure if your system is free of viruses or trojans. So if you see some strange
symptoms after running a new program, what can you do? We provide a solid
solution to this with our Integrity Master program. By running Integrity Master
before and after a new program, you can see exactly what was done to your system
and detect any damage (or virus infection) even if the damage wasn’t due to a
known virus!
REMINDER: if you see language such as the ‘please inform anyone else’ in the
above hoax you should recognize the email as a hoax!
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Learn how Integrity Master can protect your PC
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Copyright © 1999 Stiller Research.
Document Last Modified December 12, 1999.