PBR

Text of this virus hoax reads as follows:

We have been informed of a new virus-"PBR." It will arrive on e-mail titled "How to deep fry a Cat." CALIFORNIA IBM and AOL have announced that it is more powerful than Melissa, there is no remedy. On Feb 29th 2000, It will eat all of your EXCEL files on the hard drive and also destroys HTTP files. Do not open anything with this title. 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. This information was announced yesterday morning by IBM. Please share it with everyone in your address book so that the spreading of the virus may be stopped. This is a very dangerous virus and there is no remedy for it at this time. Please practice cautionary measures and forward this to all ASAP.

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.