- NEW YORK - 'Melissa,' a computer virus that can overwhelm corporate systems
in a mouse click, may have infected more than 100,000 machines this weekend,
forcing at least some companies to shut electronic mail systems.
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- "We are getting a steady stream
of phone calls this morning from organizations who have been affected by
the virus,'' Jeff Carpenter, at the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)
at Carnegie Mellon University, said Monday.
-
- CERT estimates the bug affected more
than 100,000 machines.
-
- Carpenter said more than 150 companies
have complained about "Melissa,'' a virus which comes in the form
of a document that lists pornography sites on the World Wide Web.
-
- The bug creates a flood of unwanted e-mails
as the program perpetuates itself using pre-programmed "macros,''
software embedded in Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system, that sets
off complex computer functions with one command.
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- "I came in this morning and I had
213 nasty e-mails attacking me,'' said Jennifer Mehlow, a press relations
specialist at Fleishman-Hillard in Austin, Texas, who said she had inadvertently
forwarded the virus to several reporters.
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- Lucent Technologies Inc. the world's
largest telecommunications equipment maker, Friday received a copy of the
tainted note. It shut its e-mail system for the weekend in an effort to
inoculate itself, a Lucent spokesman said.
-
- Several anti-virus software makers, including
market leaders Network Associates Inc. and Symantec Corp., have posted
to their Web sites programs that can detect the virus and repair systems
that have been infected.
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