29 Mar 1999
Melissa virus infects thousands in first 24 hours
Office 97 infector likely to cause worldwide disruption to email servers
A virus which spreads itself by emailing infected files is set
to cause widespread disruption to email servers, costing businesses
millions of pounds in lost time and data.
The virus, known as WM97/Melissa was
discovered on 27th March and has already spread to thousands of
users globally in the first 24 hours.
Melissa is a simple Word 97 macro virus with a warhead which
extracts the first fifty email addresses from Microsoft Outlook
address book. It then sends an infected message which reads: 'Here
is that document you asked for...don't show anyone else.' The
message contains an attachment of the originally infected
document.
The virus affects computers running MS Office 97 or Office 2000.
It spreads automatically on computers with MS Outlook. It increases
its chances of infection by turning virus protection on the machine
down to its lowest setting, so that users are no longer warned if
they are about to open a file with macros.
'The virus originally appeared in a Usenet news posting to the
alt.sex newsgroup,' said Dr Jan
Hruska, technical director at Sophos. 'The main threat is that
it spreads so quickly and can choke email servers by the sheer
number of messages. Users may unknowingly open the infected email
and within minutes a host of other organisations may become
infected.' 'We believe that thousands of computers have been hit by
Melissa,' added Hruska. 'It is vital that users update their
anti-virus software before the cost implications start hitting
home.'
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.