Melissa virus goes global

Published: 31 March 1999 y., Wednesday
MeThe Melissa computer virus, discovered only last Friday,has spread itself by e-mail around the world and is causing havoc for large corporations, according to security experts.It is just a macro virus but it has this additional feature of being able to get around quick.Melissa conceived in sex group Dr Solomon_s VirusPatrol, which checks newsgroups on the Net for developing viruses, discovered Melissa in a sex newsgroup on March 26.The New York Times reported that several major US corporations shut down their mail servers on Friday night as they became overloaded with messages created by the virus.Comments inside the macro virus identify it as "Melissa...by Kwyjibo." Computers become infected when users receive a particular e-mail and open a Word document attached to it.The e-mail is headed: "Important Message From" and contains the sentence: "Here is that document you asked for...don_t show anyone else ;-)." the attachment is usually called list.doc.If the user launches the document, their computer becomes infected, although the worst thing that can happen apparently is if it is launched when the day equals the minute value...such as 29 minutes past on the 29th, the following message appears:
" Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game_s over. I_m outta here." When the document attachment is launched, a program is created which replicates the e-mail and sends it to the first 50 addresses in the Global Address Book of users running Microsoft_s Outlook personal organiser. Microsoft, Network Associates and other anti-virus and computer security companies have issued warnings and are supplying fixes for Melissa.
Šaltinis: Internet
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

Telecom giants join forces against hackers

High-profile telecom and networking companies are banding together to crack down on hackers more »

CeBIT 2005 - End of the Show

End-of-show report for CeBIT 2005 (10 to 16 March) in Hannover/Germany more »

Sony Ericsson ROB-1 Bluetooth Motion Cam

Sony Ericsson announces at CeBIT the Bluetooth Motion Cam ROB-1 more »

Online Personal Video Recorder

German video streaming service company TV1 is launching at CeBit 2005 an online personal video recording service called shift.tv more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

China Retailers Adopting POS Terminals

China retailers are just starting to adopt electronic point-of-sale terminals, as the number of shipments is expected to surpass those to Germany, Europe's largest POS market, this year more »

News from Digital Certification Centre

On January 27, 2005 JSC “Skaitmeninio sertifikavimo centras” (Digital Certification Centre) presented an application for IVPC to register a company providing qualified certification services. The director of the company Mudrikas Dadasovas tells about the future plans. more »

GuruNet, Google get a little closer

GuruNet's stock fell back to Earth on Tuesday after the company revealed the extent of its tightening relationship with Google more »

Saddam Hussein 'death' photos used as worm bait

Photos of a "dead" Saddam Hussein are the lure for a new mass-mailing worm, Sophos warned on Thursday more »

IBM's SOA Service Sets Up Shop

Picking up where it left off in 2004 with its distributed computing plans, IBM introduced a new service to help companies build and deploy service-oriented architectures more »