10 Years With Melissa, the Worm that Changed the World

[Airbot]

Malware was in the minor leagues before Melissa showed everyone how to really harass the Internet. 10 years later we still don't have a good solution to mail worms.

It was the first of the mail viruses. Melissa hit the scene in March of 1999 and seemed a little like black magic. Open an e-mail attachment, from someone you know, no less, and suddenly other people you know are getting the same e-mail. Melissa required Microsoft Office, Word and Outlook in particular, using VBA for programming and MAPI for transport. Some modifications were needed to the model, but the mail virus was an inspiration which transformed the world of malware and went on to build the massive populations of botnets that infect and persecute the world.

more:eweek.com

 

[Jacee]

Also called the Storm Worm, which debuted as "Melissa" or "Malissa"
VBS Script worm, spread by e-mail.

And yes, it's still out there because most unknowing users will open all kinds of attachments

 

[angryman]

With hotmails storage, I'm not sure why anyone bothers to use outlook, it's just an added security risk, at least for personal use.

 

[ambientmf]

I find Thunderbird with Gmail filters out most spam, at least for me anyways.

Am I the only one who thinks botnets are scary as all hell?
Just the idea of a single entity having control of thousands of hosts, all unsuspecting.
It's quite frightening to me (albeit very interesting as well).

 

[napilopez]

Oh virii(soundes cooler than viruses ). Malovolent as they may be, there is something intriguing about them, I must say. I was recently reading a list of the top viruses ever, with the ILOVEYOU virus of course being on top. Infecting 10% of all computerrs is no small feat . And the MyDoom virus taking up 20-30% of all the email traffic in the world.

Still though I wonder, like seriously, whats the point? Why would someone do something like that? Like, you'se your scripting skizzles for something else >_>.

I think this variant of the ILY virus is pretty funny:

Attachment: virus_warning.jpg.vbs
Subject Line: Dangerous Virus Warning
Message Body: There is a dangerous virus circulating. Please click attached picture to view it and learn to avoid it.

XD

 

[angryman]

I find Thunderbird with Gmail filters out most spam, at least for me anyways.

Am I the only one who thinks botnets are scary as all hell?
Just the idea of a single entity having control of thousands of hosts, all unsuspecting.
It's quite frightening to me (albeit very interesting as well).

Aside from when we have actual robots as computers, the only scary part is it'll direct all traffic from those hosts to whoever the botnet controller feels like turning off. At least his or her internet.

Very easy to track however.

 

[netomx]

Just imaging how many computers have bots... and imagine if you make small DoS to a host....

 

[angryman]

most of them have built in chokepoints now, look at rogers, fast internet, but try to download a big file and it throttles you.