Encyclopedia > Melissa worm

  Article Content

Melissa worm

The Melissa worm was a computer worm that attacked the Microsoft e-mail client (MUA) Outlook and the word processor Microsoft Word and caused large troubles in the Internet mail systems starting March 26, 1999.

Melissa was written by David L. Smith[?] in Eatontown[?], New Jersey, and named after a lap-dancer[?] he encountered in Florida. The creator of the virus called himself Kwyjibo, but was shown to be identical to macrovirus writers VicodinES and Alt-F11 who had several Word-files with the same characteristic Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), a serial number that was earlier generated with the network card MAC address as a component.

The document that was distributed with the worm contained a list of 80 pornographic web sites and was initially posted to a Usenet newsgroup. Upon opening the document, the worm was activated. The worm would then send a copy of itself to the first 50 entries of the Outlook address book.

See Also



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Michael Barrymore

...   Contents Michael Barrymore Michael Barrymore, born 4 May 1952, is a British comedian famous for his variety shows. This article is a stub. You can hel ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 22.8 ms