March 27, 1999
E-Mail Virus Spreads on Internet,
Could Tie Up Traffic if Not Stopped
By MARK BOSLET
Dow Jones Newswires
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- A computer virus that spread quickly across the
Internet on Friday afternoon shut down e-mail servers at some companies and
overloaded others with infected e-mail, industry executives said.
Some executives fear the virus, which is dubbed Melissa and which preys on
Microsoft Corp.'s Word 97 and Word 2000 software, could tie up traffic on
the Internet on Monday if it is unstopped.
A program to prevent the spread of the Melissa virus is available at
www.sendmail.com.
Microsoft has a patch available at:
www.microsoft.com/security/ bulletins/ms99-002.asp
CERT information about the virus is available on the Web at
www.cert.org/advisories/ CA-99-04-Melissa- Macro-Virus.html.
The virus enters a computer in an e-mail message labeled "Important Message
>From [name]," where the name is the apparent sender's name.
Melissa replicates itself when a computer user opens the e-mail and a
Word-based attachment it contains. Once open and active, the virus sends
infected e-mail to 50 new recipients it finds in the computer owner's
address book.
The virus shut down e-mail servers at Microsoft late Friday and hampered
operations at other companies, such as Lucent Technologies Inc. said Eric
Allman, chief technology officer at Send Mail Inc. Send Mail makes e-mail
routing software used widely on the Internet.
Representatives from Microsoft and Lucent couldn't be reached for comment.
The body of the infected e-mail document reads: "Here's the document you
asked for. Don't show it to anyone else."
The Computer Emergency Response Team -- Carnegie Mellon's Department of
Defense-funded computer security team -- first heard of the virus Friday
afternoon and its members worked through the night to analyze the virus and
develop a fix, CERT manager Katherine Fithen said.
"We're getting so many reports from across the world that we know this is
going to be a huge problem come Monday," Ms. Fithen said.
Send Mail's Mr. Allman said Send Mail came up with a program to prevent the
virus's spread. It simply identifies an e-mail with the label "Important
Message From" and returns it to the sender. The program is available for
download from the Send Mail web site.
"Monday could be seriously painful for the Internet" if lots of users open
and read e-mail messages infected with Melissa, Mr. Allman said.
--The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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