RE: 26 March 1999: Happy Birthday. Melissa

["William Lefkovics" <william () emailonastick com>]

He should be honoured for helping expose weaknesses in a certain
appliction/os combination.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org] On
Behalf Of Fergie
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2006 1:56 PM
To: funsec () linuxbox org
Subject: [funsec] 26 March 1999: Happy Birthday. Melissa

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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Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
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Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.