Melissa turns ten, and she’s still dancing!

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 24 March 2009 17:24

IT Industry - Deals

This Thursday 26 March, marks the 10 year anniversary of the notorious Melissa virus, the very first notable email-aware virus, allegedly named after a lap dancer who the virus creator, David L Smith, supposedly met in Florida.

As I’m sure you don’t need reminding, the Melissa virus sent an infected email entitled "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else" via Microsoft Outlook to the first 50 email addresses on the victims' mailing list, and spread so quickly around the world that it overloaded email servers across the globe.
 
However, reminding us all about Melissa, MessageLabs’, which intercepted the virus in March 1999, says that despite not causing irreparable damage, the virus was widely credited with laying the foundations for the devastating use of botnets that has since allowed cyber criminals to spread malware so rapidly and economically.
 
MessageLabs’ Alex Shipp, says that since intercepting the virus in 1999, MessageLabs - now part of Symantec - has stopped 108 different strains and more than 100,000 copies of the virus.
 
“Even today, Melissa is a permanent feature on the threat landscape with MessageLabs services still intercepting on average ten copies a month.
 
"Melissa was the virus equivalent of the supermodels from the 90’s, known by one name and iconic within the industry," says Shipp.

“This was the first attack of this magnitude and I remember that when the numbers reached the hundreds within the first hour of stopping Melissa, which were significant levels in 1999, we knew the threat landscape had changed evermore."