G-Unit>

Memories of the Melissa virus

| Posted on Apr 26, 2011 | Comments (0) | Views: ()

It all started with just one file being uploaded to the internet. An infected Word document was posted to the alt.sex usenet newsgroup on March 26 1999. Most people probably thought a Word .DOC file was harmless, even though simple macro viruses had been circulating since mid-1995, and were all too eager to open the file to look through the list of passwords for pornographic websites. That was the trigger which lead to the Melissa virus spreading like wildfire around the world. Because when you opened the Word document it forwarded itself to the first 50 people in your Microsoft Outlook address book. There were some other curiosities about Melissa which are sometimes forgotten. The virus occasionally corrupted documents by inserting the phrase 'twenty-two, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here.'. This was a reference to an episode of "The Simpsons" cartoon show, where Bart is playing Homer at Scrabble and puts down the "word" KWIJYBO to represent a balding, North American ape. Melissa was the first one of the first* successful email-aware viruses, forcing some large companies to shut down their email gateways because of the colossal amount of email the malware was generating. Virus writers couldn't fail to notice the impact that Melissa was having, and the virus cast a long shadow as it inspired thousands of other malware attacks such as Anna Kournikova, The Love Bug, Netsky, and Bagle in the years to come. I hadn't quite started working for Sophos at the time of the Melissa virus outbreak (I was in-between security companies, minding my garden) but I still remember how internet discussion groups like alt.comp.virus were dominated with discussion of this fast-spreading piece of malware, and how other hackers posted of their concern that Melissa's author may have bitten off more than he could chew. And, funnily enough, it was that initial posting to the alt.sex internet newsgroup that was to help the authorities identify the mastermind behind the Melissa virus. The Word document that had been uploaded to Usenet had come from the account of an AOL user, skyrocket@aol.com. Police contacted AOL and quickly determined that the owner of the account had not been the person who had uploaded the file - instead his account had been compromised by an unknown hacker. Fortunately, AOL were able to provide information which pointed in the direction of a house in New Jersey. Less than a week after the Melissa virus outbreak began, 30-year-old David L Smith was arrested at his brother's house in Eatontown, New Jersey, and it was soon confirmed that Smith had released the virus (which he had named after a stripper he had known in Florida) from his apartment. More @ http://bit.ly/eS2kKo

Share