Your friend is the scoutshacker

This hoax is based upon the Your friend D@fit hoax. It appears to have been distributed widely in the Netherlands. The text of this hoax reads as follows:

Als je een e-mail ontvangt met alsonderwerp "Your friend is the scoutshacker" moet je hem NIET openen. Je harde schijf wordt dan meteen gewist. Stuur dit mailbericht naar zoveel mogelijk mensen. Het is een nieuw, zeer kwaadaardig virus. Deze informatie werd bekendgemaakt door McAfee. Deel dit nieuws met iedereen in je adresboek, zodat de verspreiding van het virus kan worden stopgezet. Het is een Zeer GEVAARLIJK virus en wordt op dit moment door nog geen enkel antivirusprogramma herkend. Dus niet openen!!!

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.