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Name: Ghost
Alias: Ghosts
Description:

This is a widespread false alarm on a demonstration program. There is no virus or trojan by this name.

GHOST.EXE is a Windows program which displays a graveyard and a set of ghosts in a window. On Friday the 13th, the title of the screen was changed to 'Happy Friday the 13th!' and the ghosts started flying around the Windows desktop. This program was analysed and found harmless.

This kind of hoax is different from the traditional e-mail chain letter hoaxes, such as Good Times, since several innocent programs have received lots of publicity lately as they have been accused of being trojans or viruses.

Naturally, whenever any program is declared clean, there's a risk that somebody will take the file and infect it - since people will now trust it. To overcome this problem, you can verify the files against the 32-bit CRC's of the confirmed clean versions.

The confirmed-clean versions of this program have the following CRCs as displayed by PKUNZIP:

 Length  Method   Size  Ratio   Date    Time    CRC-32  Attr  Name 
 ------  ------   ----- -----   ----    ----   -------- ----  ---- 
  28096  DeflatN  14145  50%  30-10-96  13:20  5dce8738 --w-  GHOST.EXE 
  28064  DeflatN  14142  50%  13-11-96  13:45  a6839c30 --w-  GHOST2.EXE 
  28065  DeflatX  14121  50%  11-22-96  12:11  f47d5cbd --w-  GHOST3.EXE 
 ------          ------  ---                                  ------- 
[Analysis: Mikko Hypponen, Data Fellows Ltd's F-PROT Pro Support]