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Year 2000 Computer Viruses and Hoaxes


Initial Release: December 16, 1999

  1. CERT/CC Virus and Hoax Reports
  2. Information about Y2K Viruses by Anti-Virus Vendors

CERT/CC Virus and Hoax Reports

The following items are the approximate number of reports we have received of computer viruses and hoaxes that have some reference to Y2K. If you would like detailed information for the following viruses and hoaxes, check the virus databases maintained by the anti-virus vendors. A list of the databases can be found in the following document:

CERT/CC Computer Virus Resources
http://www.cert.org/other_sources/viruses.html

Y2K Viruses
Virus Name* Reports to CERT/CC**
Babylonia none
Fix2001, Fix2001, Win32.Admin.12288 1
Mypics, Pics4You.exe none
Polyglot, Y2K Count, Count2k 7
W97M.Chantal, W97M.Epileptic, W97M/Epi none
W97M.MMKV, W97M/MMK.a none
W32.HLLW, Win32/Randir none

Y2K Hoaxes
HOAX Name* Reports to CERT/CC**
AOL Year 2000 Update, Y2KFIX.EXE none
FROGAPULT, ELFBOWL, Y2KGAME Virus 2
Happy New Year Virus none
Jan1st20.exe Virus none
South Park News Letter none
Windows will Fail on Jan 1 none
Y2K7 none

* A single virus or hoax may have a number of different names.
** These numbers only include direct reports to CERT/CC. These numbers do not include reports to anti-virus vendors or other anti-virus organizations.

Information about Y2K Viruses by Anti-virus Vendors

This following sites have a variety of information about computer viruses and hoaxes that have some relation to Y2K. AVERT and SARC also have listings of trigger dates for various viruses. The following are papers from vendors discussing virus problems relating to Y2K.
This document is available from: http://www.cert.org/y2k-info/y2k-virus.html

CERT/CC Contact Information

Email: cert@cert.org
Phone: +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline)
Fax: +1 412-268-6989
Postal address:
CERT® Coordination Center
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
U.S.A.
CERT personnel answer the hotline 08:00-20:00 EST(GMT-5) / EDT(GMT-4) Monday through Friday; they are on call for emergencies during other hours, on U.S. holidays, and on weekends.

Using encryption

We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information sent by email. Our public PGP key is available from

If you prefer to use DES, please call the CERT hotline for more information.

Getting security information

CERT publications and other security information are available from our web site

To be added to our mailing list for advisories and bulletins, send email to cert-advisory-request@cert.org and include SUBSCRIBE your-email-address in the subject of your message.

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