Hoax Viruses and Virus Alerts
Robert Slade, Vancouver Institute for Research into User Security, Canada
The JPEG Hoax and Graphics Viruses
Characteristics and Identification
INTRODUCTION
On occasion, you will find messages circulating by e-mail, alerting the reader to a new virus, usually virulent and fast-spreading. Called variously virus warning hoaxes, hoax virus warnings, hoax viruses, metaviruses, meme viruses, or simply hoaxes, these messages are false alarms and yet, in a sense, are viruses themselves. Hoaxes attempt to convince the readers to forward multiple copies to other recipients, thus taking up bandwidth, disk space, time, and attention. At times, hoaxes create more problems than computer viruses themselves.
Memes
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (1990) expanded on the idea of a meme: an idea that has some perceived value and so, like a useful gene, it is passed along from person to person and generation to generation.
In the case of genes, the value tends to be expressed tautologically: if the gene has value it will benefit the organism and thus increase the chances of being passed on. In the case of memes, the value tends to be subjective and perceived by the individual. Thus, ...
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