Daisy Chain

This is an email message which is sent to people from a "practical joke" website. Sophos warns against making "practical jokes" about computer viruses as they are often misunderstood by recipients with unfortunate consequences.

The hoax reads as follows:

YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED! You are recieving this notice because our servers have detected that while surfing the internet this computer was infected with the Daisy Chain Virus. The consequences of this virus are quite EXTREME. In fact you only have 10 MINUTES from the time you open this e-mail to follow the link below and deactivate the virus. If left untreated your computer will begin transmitting the ENTIRE CONTENTS of your hard drive to CYBER HACKERS. HERE IS THE LINK: http://63.74.112.80/UBENHAD.cfm?ID=XXXXX Other scans of your computer also found traces of ILLEGAL PORN on this machine. As a precaution the Internet Patrol (IP) has been sent a copy of our report. To view this report or to make modifications to it follow this link: http://63.74.112.80/UBENHAD.cfm?ID=XXXXX

Many virus hoaxes:

• falsely claim to describe an extremely dangerous virus
• use pseudo-technical language to make impressive-sounding (but impossible) claims
• falsely claim that the report was issued or confirmed by a well-known company
• ask you to forward it to all your friends and colleagues

As usual, you are urged not to pass on warnings of this kind, as the continued re-forwarding of these hoaxes simply wastes time and email bandwidth.

It is possible that you may receive a hoax via email with a file attached. Obviously, such file attachments should be treated with caution as they may be virus infected. Sophos recommends deleting virus hoax emails, whether they contain file attachments or not.

Sophos suggests a policy to help prevent hoaxes from spreading in your company.