Posted by Rick [Rick] on March 29, 1999 at 20:46:15 {7nb3mCfGvUctB9oBIfGcFMFBt36Xyc}:
This is NOT a hoax or urband legend. THIS IS REAL! "Often disguised as a message from a friend or colleague, Melissa is a simple e-mail sent to unspecting users, saying ''Important message from....'' But when users open the message, it can cause a flood of new e-mails to be sent over the Internet from the reader's own online address book."
Below is a link to a news story on Melissa, with relevant snippets.
Rick
[...]
The virus, named Melissa, greeted huge numbers of workers as they signed on to their e-mail systems at the start of the work week, spreading ``more quickly than any other virus in the history of viruses,'' Viveros said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations's National Infrastructure Protection Center said it was notified of the virus Friday and has received reports of ``significant network degradation and e-mail outages'' at major corporations and Internet service providers.
[...]
``I came in this morning and I had 213 nasty e-mails attacking me,'' said Mehlow, a press relations specialist at Fleishman-Hillard in Austin.
[...]
Several anti-virus software makers, including Network Associates Inc. and Symantec Corp., Sendmail Inc. and Trend Micro have posted to their Web sites programs that can detect the virus and repair systems that have been infected.