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5 years ago... Virus experts fear 'daughter of Melissa'

The original inbox bitch...

Tags: virus

By silicon.com

Published: 22 November 2004 16:10 GMT

22.11.99: A fresh Melissa variant is sweeping across Europe and the US, infecting computers with a virus set to go off on Christmas Day.

Like the original virus, the Melissa.w variant or 'Prilissa' as it has been dubbed, automatically sends itself to everyone on an infected computer's address list.

According to Alex Shipp, virus technologist at ISP Star Internet, if a user who has received the email runs Microsoft Word 97 on the 25 December, Prilissa will overwrite the autoexec.bat file and re-format the C drive.

22.11.04: Five years on to the day and warnings of the latest virus to be spreading around the world are rife - this time Sober-I, news of which broke on Friday.

Many a current virus - and the awareness of their potential impact - owes much to Melissa, which set a benchmark in the virus writing community and antivirus industry.

Speaking to silicon.com to mark the 20th anniversary of the computer virus Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, described Melissa as "the first successful email-aware virus and the granddaddy of all email-aware viruses".

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