Melissa Virus

On Friday March 26, 1999 an e-mail virus named "Melissa" slipped into systems via e-mail and forcing computers to fire off dozens of infected messages to friends and colleagues. Once opened, the virus immediately reads the user's e-mail address book and sends an infected message to the first 50 entries. Although the virus apparently causes no permanent damage to a computer, its clogging affects were far-reaching. All new Microsoft Word documents created on an infected computer will contain …

…in its system. Although it is hard to find the source of the the e-mail. A man named Richard Smith, president of Phar Lap Software, a firm that makes operating systems and software tools, thinks he knows who made the e-mail virus. He had found clues linking the virus to a still-unidentified writer who uses the computer handle ``VicodinES''. He thinks the virus writer distributed it using an account stolen from America Online 15 months ago.