|
  |
|
|
This Month In History - Melissa a Computer Virus
The computer virus Melissa was first discovered March 26, 1999. It caused havoc in large governmental, educational and military institutions as it spread itself through word macros that were attached to emails and asked the user if they wanted to open the attachment. An outbreak of the computer virus Melissa can cause email servers to be overloaded, computer memory to be lost and the eventual crashing of individual computer and computer networks. Variants of the Melissa computer virus can infect word documents with the infamous list of pornography sites if the virus is opened at a time that is embedded in its coding. A very common variant of the virus is called papa and is spread by infected excel files. The computer virus Melissa is also quite crude, as it is sent from your email address. The content of the list.doc is a meticulous compilation of pornographic sites on the
Internet, which is of course not the kind of file to be viewed by valued business colleagues and friends. This virus is a Word 97 macro virus with a deadly ability; it has the capability to regenerate itself and is very hard to contain with the use of email. When the document
infected by Melissa is opened for the first time the virus checks, whether the user’s computer is installed with MS Outlook. If it finds Outlook the virus sends email to 50
addresses found in the address book of the outlook. The virus can only be spread when using the Outlook, if the user is not using Outlook, the virus will not try to spread
on its own using other email. The program is somewhat devious in that it sends itself from the email addresses of people who are likely to be familiar contacts, arriving as email with the subject line
"Important message from..." followed by the sender's name. The body says "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else." The email includes an attached Word
file "list.doc," which includes the porn sites' addresses. The virus doesn't appear to cause any damage to infected computers except in rare cases when the minutes of the current time match the date--for example at 4:26 p.m. on March 26. In this instance, the virus will insert the Bart Simpson quotation, "Twenty-two points, plus tiple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here" into a user's active document. Somewhat like the mathematical progression of a pyramid scheme, the Melissa Virus sends 50 copies of its self to others. Then they each send 50 copies (that's 2500) then those 2500 send 50 to 125000, then they send 6,250,000. In just 6 hops the nasty Melissa virus could be sent to over 300 million people. There's a very real possibility that the virus could overwhelm mail servers.
Although the Melissa computer virus on its own is not very physically damaging to your computer it is certainly an obnoxious pheromones to have to contend with. All it seems
to do is embed its signature message into the first fifty email addresses listed in an Outlook Express program and send out them out with the offending attachment, and well,
who would want to have a virus in their computers? This just proves how vulnerable our computers are; soon a more deadly virus may come and infect us. There are many variants, MelissaAO, MelissaW, MelissaV and MelissaU, etc. The creator of Melissa was David L Smith from New Jersey. Mr. Smith received for all his hard work a
sentence of 20 months in a federal prison and fined $5,000. I hope he found great satisfaction in his actions.
|
No reactions yet.
Please login or sign up to rate this intel.
Please login or sign up to add a comment.
The copyright for this content entitled "This Month In History - Melissa a Computer Virus" has been specified by the contributor as:
All Rights Reserved
This content may not be copied, distributed or adapted by anyone under any circumstances.
|
 |
May, 2012
2008
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2009
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2010
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2011
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2012
January, February, March, April, May
|
|
Not a member yet?
Qondio is a powerful network for making it online. If you have a website to
promote, we can help.
Sign up and get in on the action.
|
|
Welcome to Qondio! Discover the awesome power this network can deliver by going to our About page. Or you could skip straight to the Sign Up form.
|
|
