Hooming G-Gnome

Here is the text of the hoax:

Someone is sending out a virus called the Hooming G-Gnome. If you download it, you will lose everything! Your hard drive will crash and someone from the Internet will get your screen name and password! It takes 20 years to read, even fast, DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! It just went into circulation yesterday, as far as we know. Please DISTRIBUTE this message. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning from MICROSOT. Please share it with everyone that might excess the Internet. Once again, pass this along to EVERYONE in your address book so that this may be stopped. AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and that there is NO remedy for it at this time.

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.