Melissa Virus Completed Ten Years of Propagation

Many security companies released news reports on March 26, 2009 according to which the day marked tenth anniversary of the destructive Melissa computer worm that spread its infection to a number of e-mail servers worldwide since it got unleashed in 1999.

The Melissa virus, which spread through e-mail attachments, propagated like wildfire. Once the recipient opened the attachment containing a DOC file, the virus forwarded the e-mail along with the attachment to at least 50 other users from the contact list of the victim. This led to the clogging and eventual closure of the online e-mail systems all over the world.

In fact, Internet users worldwide felt the impact of the virus, particularly in the Internet savvy nations like the UK and US. Jose Nazario, Manager of Security Research, Arbor Networks said that the malware proliferated so fast that no one was able to find a way of thwarting it, as reported by SCMAGAZINE on March 25, 2009.

MessageLabs, a unit of Symantec, also reports that the lab intercepted and prevented 108 variants and over 100,000 copies of Melissa from the day it got detected. Even in 2008, MessageLabs said it intercepted an average of 10 Melissa-infected e-mails each month.

In fact, Melissa is regarded as very successful malicious software in the real environment. Further, it was also most notable to the con artists who observed how fast this virus could propagate all over the world.

Alex Shipp, Senior Director of emerging anti-malware technologies at MessageLabs, states that when people were writing viruses to cause nuisance, Melissa was also written with the same intention. Online criminals observed how fast and effective the virus was in infecting and compromising computers, as reported by vnunet on March 26, 2009.

Furthermore, Graham Cluley, Senior IT Consultant, Sophos, portrays Melissa as the e-mail-aware malware's "grandmother," inspiring upcoming malware writers, as reported by TheRegister on March 26, 2009. Cluley assessed that virus authors noticed the effect Melissa was making and became inspired to launch numerous other malware assaults like The Love Bug, Anna Kournikova, Bagle and Netsky in the following years.

Related article: Mules Arrested for Involvement in phishing Attacks on ABN AMRO

» SPAMfighter News - 4/1/2009