Virus??? Hoax???

Today I got this IM (replaced the name of the sender with *****):

[17:54] ********: LISTEN UP!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! If someone by the name of
Ashley Marc James wants to add you to their list dont accept it. Its a virus. Tell
everyone on your list because if somebody on your list adds them you will get it
too. It is

Emmmm.... Hoax? Someone trying to funny? Some trying to give some a bad name? Or....

For now I think it is not serious. Any comments?

Just Noticed: Can we have names that consist of three parts in SL? (Ashley Marc James)?

Morwen.

Hoax, I would bet.

These were a hoax when the message was "Tell everyone on ICQ/AIM/MSN/Y!/EMAIL/IRC/Usenet to repost this or your account will be deleted!"
All that changes is what bad thing will happen.

Almost certainly a hoax.

The nearest 'possibility' would be that, each patch of SL alerts my Norton Firewall that it's trying to access the internet - as, obviously, it's a new program as far as it's concerned. But of course that's entirely legitimate, when you're using the official client.

If, however, you're using one of these third party "hacked" clients... then you've only got yourself to blame if something nasty happens.

Broccoli

Hoax and annoying to boot. As someone pointed out earlier, there's no resident by that name (and there's no three name names in SL anyway).

Its someone messing with the new residents, which I'm sure they got tons of lolz out of, but its an insanely lame trick to pull.

of course its a hoax.... have you even seen someone is SL with a first, MIDDLE, and last name?

do ya REALLY think accepting someone as a friend can be a virus?

Just a lil common sense, 3 names turns this to a hoax immediately duh SL only has first and last names

It's the old joke about the Irish Virus: "Hello!" (in Tipperary accent) "Koindly send me to all yez friends and delete a few of yer foiles while yer' there!"

(the point being, only the irish[insert butt-of-jokes group for your locality here] are dumb enough to follow the instructions)

This type of hoax is as old as the hills; it relies on the credulous and technically naive to spread it, and the smugness of the experienced in rebutting it to increase the motivation of those taken in by the hoax to keep it going. I had five within 3 minutes of each other last night...

The target of such a hoax is to overload the messaging system.

Thank you for your FRIENDLY reply...

If it is possible to access by an script for instance to process of adding a friend, then yes... then something bad could be involved. Now, I don't know if this possible... I am not a programmer or something.

And concerning your bright remark about the name, you may have noticed I wondered about that myself already.

All others, thank you for the information.

Morwen

Anything with excessive caps and punctuation that urges you to send it around the world and back is always a hoax .

Actually, as a long time security nerd and exploit developer I can assure you that this COULD happen. Some bad assumptions in any peice of code (including adding a friend, receiving an IM, getting search results, whatever) could lead to anything at all running on your computer and doing whatever the crafter wants.

That being said, I'm pretty sure this is a hoax.

Hoax for a few reasons.

1) Virii 90% have to be "activated" by running the program. Text cannot be a virus like that of a typed message (OMG forums would be owned)

2) If there was one in the IM system (if ever there could be) I think LL would be hitting the big red button that says "shut down" on the grid.

Also the virus I heard of last night mentioned Hard Drive damanage...noown does good viruses like that. Most now a days are just kiddies wanting attention. Few are the ones that actually damage stuff.