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

IBM prepares Opteron workstation charge

IBM will bulk up its line of Opteron-based products later this year with the roll-out of a new workstation more »

Net Voice, Speech Stamped as Standards

After years as working implementations, the Voice XML 2.0 (VXML) and Speech Recognition Grammar Specifications (SRGS) won the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) seal of approval Tuesday more »

A New Ea of Wireless Services in Latvia

Nortel Networks Selected by Telekom Baltija to Deploy CDMA2000 1X 450 in Latvia; Network Planned to Offer Voice, High-Speed Data Services more »

Europe Considers Harsh Piracy Law

The European Parliament approved a controversial piracy law that would allow local police to raid the homes and offices of suspected intellectual-property pirates more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

Outdoor screens - not for the entertainment only

"Unicaster" – for advertising, announcements, presenting nightly life in Vilnius... more »

E-books for those who are afraid of time

Such editions as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, albums and geographical maps were issued on the CDs at first. Nowadays majority of the libraries, archives and museums is concerned of their funds’ security thus they are accumulating the copies of the books in the electronic libraries. more »

Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious

The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs more »

Windows could lose Media Player in EU tangle

Removing the media player from Windows may help level the playing field for competitors more »

Macromedia looks to extend Flash technology

Company also readies Flex framework more »