Melissa virus spreads through email; does not appear to affect Mac platform directly

A new virus outbreak occurred on Friday. Because of its seriousness, it's making headlines across the country (see articles from ZDNet and Infoworld for initial coverage).

Dubbed the Melissa virus, it spreads as a Word file in an email attachment. The virus is only triggered if you open the attached file. Simply downloading or reading the email message itself is harmless. The email message will typically read "Here is that document you asked for..." The apparent sender will likely be someone you know!

The virus supposedly only spreads if you are using Microsoft's Outlook application (Outlook Express appears to be safe), especially at sites running Microsoft Exchange servers. In this case, when you open the attached document, it launches a macro that takes the first 50 names in your Outlook address book and mails them copies of the message. The virus also turns off Office's macro protection. leaving the computer exposed to further virus attacks. The Word document reportedly contains links to pornographic web sites.

The spread of the virus, and ensuing deluge of email, was so severe that, after it hit Microsoft's headquarters, the company was forced to shutdown all incoming and outgoing email on Friday. The only good news is that the virus appears not to do any damage to the contents of your drive.

As of this writing, I could find no reports of the virus spreading via a Mac. It seems to be a Windows-only problem. However, even if you are not vulnerable to an attack by the virus, you can still inadvertently send the viral document to someone who is.

Other Melissa-related tidbits (thanks, Ilene Hoffman and others):

NAI Labs reports: "Melissa is a Word 97 Class Module Macro virus that can also be upconverted to a Word 2000 Macro Virus. It was first discovered by NAI's Dr. Solomon's VirusPatrol on the alt.sex newsgroup on March 26. The virus has spread rapidly around the world, and has infected thousands." They have posted fixes for their Windows antivirus applications.

Symantec has also posted details of the virus and an updated virus definitions to combat it (again, only for Windows thus far).

A file posted to the alt.sex newsgroup may have been the origin of the virus. As of this writing, the posting still has not been removed.

Another newsgroup posting has listed the entire source code for the virus.

Ironically, some virus detectives have been trying to track down the author of the virus via the GUID number embedded in the Word document (the same number criticized as a breach of privacy in recent weeks).

Some postings on bulletin boards claimed that infection was possible using LotusNotes and WordPerfect.

Update: Melissa on the Mac Several sources of information have agreed that: (1) you cannot directly spread the Melissa virus from the Mac; that is, the sending of the email to 50 names on your address list will not occur; (2) it does appear that Melissa can infect MS Office 98's Normal template; documents later created with Word could then serve as carriers of the virus. I have received one report of this happening with Outlook for the Mac. (Thanks, Ilene Hoffman, Eric Black, Bryan Dulock, and others.)