Fergie's Tech Blog

26 March 1999: Happy Birthday. Melissa

First found on March 26, 1999, Melissa shut down Internet mail systems that got clogged with infected e-mails propagating from the worm.

Melissa was first distributed in the Usenet discussion group alt.sex. The virus was inside a file called "List.DOC," which contained passwords that allow access into 80 pornographic websites. The worm's original form was sent via e-mail to many people.

Melissa was written by David L. Smith in Aberdeen Township, 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. Smith was sentenced to 20 months in a federal prison and fined $5000.

posted by Fergie @ 3/26/2006 01:48:00 PM