SR News: Cute Chicken Hoax


The Chicken Hoax!

On the surface this is a a simple hoax but because it could  potentially  be
true, we must explain some important points. Here is the complete hoax:


     heads up guys...
     this  is real ... so watch out ok?

     Last night my friend's niece was talking to someone who IM her and
     suddenly a chicken appeared on the screen, walking around.  She
     shouldn't have, but yes, she clicked on it.  All of a sudden her
     screen was filled with chickens and she couldn't do anything about
     it.  Then her puter crashed!  They lost everything!

     Warn everyone you know about this - no matter how cute the chicken
     seems to be, don't click on it!!!


This hoax has the typical hoax "Warn everyone you know". When you see  this,
you have excellent indication this is a hoax.

        Could it be legit?

The first time we saw this hoax, we couldn't be absolutely certain  that  it
was a hoax. We have seen enough cases where someone's  PC  would  crash  and
there would be massive damage to the disk. This is usually due to a crash of
the PC during a critical write operation. This can damage a single file  (in
this case the damage is  often  undetected)  or  result  in  damage  to  the
directory or FAT (in which case the entire disk may appear to  be  trashed).
The more serious situation is the case where only a single file is  damaged.
This is usually not noticed until it's too late. At that point, the  damaged
file may have been backed up and there is no longer a  way  to  recover  the
lost data or damaged program. This is why we stress that's  vital  to  check
the integrity of your PC after any crash and before backing  up  your  data.
Programs like Norton Utilities, or ScanDisk, do not accomplish this--only  a
full integrity checker like Integrity Master can accomplish this!

The bottom line is that it's quite possible that someone had their PC  crash
when they clicked on a cute chicken animation but  there  is  no  reason  to
expect it to be due to malicious code. After investigating  this  particular
"warning", we have found that it's a hoax.

The Devil Hoax and other copycat variants

We have seen an almost exact copies of the Chicken Hoax text except the user
is described as clicking on a some other character (usually  not  so  cute).
The Devil character is the most common variant that we've seen of this  hoax
but there are also variants where someone does something on some  particular
WWW site and then their PC is attacked in some  manner.  In  most  of  these
hoaxes, the text is clearly similar to the Chicken hoax text.

Here is the key to dealing with  warnings  like  this.  If  the  warning  is
similar to the above "Cute Chicken" hoax and tells you to warn everyone, you
can assume it's a hoax. If it simply reports that someone's computer crashed
and/or their disk was damaged when they visited a certain web page,  it  may
not be a be  hoax,  but  there's  also  no  reason  to  be  concerned  since
(unfortunately!) crashes and damage like this are rather common and are  due
to bugs in the Windows and Web browser software environment.

Write to Stiller Research: support@stiller.com

                                     Copyright c 1998 Stiller Research.
                                    Document Last Modified May 14, 1998.

[=- 㡫  ୠ ᪨ 蠫 //  #2 //  1998  -=]
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