Security news29 March 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.'
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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 security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
