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

Hackers Limit Disruption To Small Internet Sites

A battle among hackers erupted on the Internet yesterday as some factions disrupted a loosely coordinated effort among other groups trying to vandalize Web sites around the world more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

Denmark stops import of IT specialists outside normal rules

It will no longer be possible for Danish companies to automatically employ foreign IT specialists as an exception to the ordinary strict rules on residence permits more »

Over 200m European internet users by 2004, survey

Europe's online population reached 184m by the end of 2002 and will surge beyond 200m by the end of 2004 more »

IDC: OVER ONE MILLION INTERNET USERS IN CROATIA BY END OF 2003

It is possible to expect that by the end of this year there will be over one million Internet users in Croatia more »

Microsoft Enters Identity Management Fray

Microsoft rivals have been staking out a claim to the identity management space -- a critical component of Web services more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

ICANN comes to terms with country domains

Internet overseeing organisation ICANN has backed down in its battle with the rest of the world more »

The new banking software

Deutsche Bank S.p.A Italy Augments Service and Profitability via ACI's BASE24-es Software more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »