What is the Melissa Virus?
W97M.Melissa.A (also known as W97M.Mailissa) is a typical macro virus which, when a user opens an infected document, will attempt to e-mail a copy of this document to up to 50 other people, using Microsoft Outlook. The email message has most frequently been reported to contain the following Subject header: Subject: Important Message From
The Melissa virus refers to a computer macro virus that can infect computers and email gateways, when users run Microsoft Word 97 or 2000, or Microsoft Outlook 97 or 98. Usenet groups first received the virus, created by David L. Smith, in the late 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, some users and mail clients were shut down by the clogged replicated emails being sent and received by infected computers. Companies like Lucent, Microsoft and Intel all had to temporarily shut down their email servers because the virus was generating huge amounts of dummy emails and clogging the system. The virus has several forms and may infect a computer is the following manner: 1. The virus comes in .DOC formation, and attempts to replicate and send itself to other computers via email addresses on the computer. 2. A variant of the virus does the above and also attempts to delete files. 3. The user receives an email titled “My Pictures” which is blank but contains an attached file. When opened, it deletes d
