In July 2004, a Trojan was sent out bearing the subject line "Osama Found Hanged". The body of the email read:

• Osama Bin Ladin was found hanged by two CNN journalists early Wedensday evening. As evidence they took several photos, some of which i have included here. As yet, this information has not hit the headlines due to Bush wanting confirmation of his identity but the journalists have released some early photos over the internet..

The email then included a link to a website which downloaded a variant of the Hackarmy Trojan, a rather ho-hum backdoor that logged on to a predefined IRC server and accepted certain commands. The Trojan was easily detectable by antivirus, the site was shutdown quickly, and few - if any - infections actually occurred as a result. In short, it was dead in the water before it even started to swim.

Now fast forward to a year later. In July 2005, twelve months after this original non-threat was discovered, someone composed a panicked email claiming:

• Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged are being sent and the moment that you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be able to fix it!!!
  This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe, but mainly in the US and Israel.
  
  Don't be inconsiderate; send this warning to whomever you know.
  

Unfortunately, unlike the Trojan it warns about, the email hoax is getting wide distribution, spreading FUD and wasting time and bandwidth.

Please do be considerate; DON'T send this warning to anyone you know. It's as bogus as the alleged pictures of Osama are.