Re: User Education Tool?

[George Capehart <gwc () acm org>]

On Thursday 04 March 2004 10:17 am, Andreas Saurwein wrote:
> On a somewhat abstract line of thinking, in regards to the latest
> virus outbreaks, one idea came up which might be even useful:
>
> I think that we all agree that the current outbreak of Netsky, Bagle
> and others is mainly because users still try to open everything they
> receive, no matter how weird it is.
>
> Now, doing something really flashy like creating an virus like
> application as follows:
> * it is sent as zipped attachment
> * when opened, it brings a huge, clear message, that the user would
> now have been infected with a virus. A short, understandable message
> explaining why and how to avoid it would be appropriate.
> * it asks the user for permission to forward itself to the users
> contacts, to help spreading the education.
>
> Would that still classify as virus? Or would that pass as something
> else? Would a measure like this be of any success? What other measure
> could reach the critical user groups?
>
> Probably this has been discussed on some lists already, but didnt
> find any references.

There is an ancient (well, in Internet time) command line tool that is 
useful in this situation .  .  .  To see the man page:

man lart

If you don't have access to a *nix machine, see 
http://www.geocities.com/urifrid/man-lart.html

Enjoy!

/g
-- 
George W. Capehart

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