I receive a newsletter from v-myths, and this was in it last time. It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone did this.  ;)


April Fool's Day seems appropriate for this...
by Rob Rosenberger -- 02/25/03

THINK ABOUT EVERY computer virus story you've read in the last ten years. What one piece of advice does every story give you?

Let's all up­date our anti­virus soft­ware at exactly the same time on April Fool's Day!  
"Keep your antivirus software updated."

So let's do it. But let's make it interesting, shall we? Let's all update our antivirus software at exactly the same time. We'll do it on April Fool's Day at 1700 UTC.

"1700 UTC" equates to noon in the U.S. Eastern time zone and 9am in the Pacific time zone. Set your calendars to update your antivirus software. Wait for the clock to strike, then start updating. If your software can schedule an automatic update, then I implore you to schedule it for the appropriate time.

Feel free to "update early and often" if you live in the Chicago area.

Okay, now let's sweeten the pot just a little bit more. If your firm relies on Symantec Norton AntiVirus for SMTP Gateways v3.0 -- and if it runs as LocalSystem on a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 server with an NTFS %SystemDrive% -- then you'll definitely want to update your antivirus software on April Fool's Day starting at 1700 UTC.

Exquisite irony! The whole world will flood antivirus websites right as big corporations & government agencies need an update.

Oh, sure, some people might call it a distributed denial-of-service attack ... but this kind of thing happens all the time. Panicky users go on a stampede whenever CNN sounds the alarm. Indeed, antivirus firms often blame the media for causing panic to explain why they can't support paying customers at the very moment those paying customers need support.

So let's do it! Tell your friends, your coworkers, and everyone who ever forwarded a virus alert to you. Let's all update our antivirus software at exactly the same time on April Fool's Day.

This would not be a very good idea. If it were possible to actually co-ordinate, it would wreak the kind of havoc many were expecting on Jan. 1, 2000.