Common name Melissa | Technical name W97M.Melissa.A Author(s) | |
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Operating system(s) affected | ||
The Melissa virus was a mass-mailing macro virus. As it was not a standalone program, it is not a worm.
David L. Smith
Around March 26, 1999 Melissa was put in the wild by David L. Smith of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. (The virus itself was credited to Kwyjibo, who was shown to be macrovirus writers VicodinES and ALT-F11 by comparing MS Word documents with the same globally unique identifier—this method was also used to trace the virus back to Smith.) On December 10, 1999 Smith pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years, serving 20 months, and was fined US $5,000. The arrest was the result of a collaborative effort involving (amongst others) the FBI, the New Jersey State Police, Monmouth Internet and a Swedish computer scientist. David L. Smith was accused of causing $80 million worth of damages by disrupting personal computers and computer networks in business and government.
