26 March 1999: Happy Birthday. Melissa

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Via Wikipedia.

[snip]

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.

[snip]

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_worm

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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