AOL4FREE actually consists of three separate, independent items:

1. The AOL4FREE Macintosh Program for gaining fraudulent accounts on AOL.
2. The AOL4FREE Virus Warning Hoax. 
3. The AOL4FREE.COM Trojan horse program that deletes all the files on your hard drive. 


The AOL4FREE Macintosh Program was originally written to provide illegal free access to America Online. In the March 1997 issue of the CSI Computer Security Alert the following statement was made concerning the creator of that program: 

"A former Yale computer science student has pleaded guilty to defrauding America Online. AOL estimates it lost between $40,000 and $70,000 in service charges because the student distributed his computer program, AOL4FREE, to hundreds of other users."

Note that any attempt to use the original AOL4FREE.COM program may subject you to prosecution.


The second item is the AOL4FREE Virus Warning Hoax message. The following message has been circulating around the Internet, warning of a virus infected e-mail message:

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VIRUS ALERT!!!
DON'T OPEN E-MAIL NOTING "AOL4FREE"

Anyone who receives this must send it to as many people as you can.  It is essential that this problem be reconciled as soon as possible.  A few hours ago, I opened an E-mail that had the subject heading of "AOL4FREE.COM". Within seconds of opening it, a window appeared and began to display my files that were being deleted.  I immediately shut down my computer, but it was too late.  This virus wiped me out.  It ate the Anti-Virus Software that comes with the Windows '95 Program along with F-Prot AVS.  Neither was able to detect it. Please be careful and send this to as many people as possible, so maybe this new virus can be eliminated.

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This message has several problems that identify it as a hoax. 
1. A virus like program can not spread in an e-mail message. While an infected program could be attached to an e-mail message, the e-mail message itself cannot contain one in any form that could be executed.
2. A virus or Trojan horse program can not infect a system by simply being read. The current mail readers do not execute an e-mail message, they display it on the screen for you to read. You must take care when downloading an attachment to an e-mail message. In some mail readers you can double click on the attachment icon to have it extracted and opened by whatever program created it. If that attachment is a program, it is downloaded and run, and running any program you have not scanned could cause you to be infected with a virus. 
3. While this warning message is a hoax, the things it describes could be accomplished with a Trojan horse program. That Trojan horse could then be attached to an e-mail message and if the reader downloads and executes the Trojan horse program, it could do the damage described in this message. In fact, someone has done that as is explained below. 


The third item is the AOL4FREE.COM Trojan Horse. This program appears to be the AOL4FREE program that creates fraudulent AOL accounts (though it is a DOS program instead of a Macintosh program) but is actually a simple compiled DOS batch file that runs the DOS DELTREE command on the C:\ directory of a DOS/Windows machine. The DELTREE command deletes all files in a directory, including the directory itself and any subdirectories in that directory. The effect is to delete all files on the C: drive of a DOS/Windows machine. If you should come across this program from any source, do not run it. For more information see CIAC Bulletin H-47a: AOL4FREE.COM Trojan Horse Program Destroys Hard Drives.

CIAC ALWAYS recommends that software downloaded onto a computer from any source (BBS, e-mail attachment, floppy, web) be scanned with antivirus software prior to being run. Note that most antivirus software does not detect Trojans, so it is important to know where your software came from before executing it.


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