The virus - a Microsoft Word macro dubbed Melissa - replicates in two ways: by copying itself into Word documents via their underlying template, and by sending itself to fifty addresses from each user's Outlook address book.
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.
Following Delbrouck's revelations, Microsoft updated its Knowledge Base article 822924, titled 'Overview of Office features that are intended to enable collaboration and that are not intended to increase security' to include the following warning...
The virus - a Microsoft Word macro dubbed Melissa - replicates in two ways: by copying itself into Word documents via their underlying template, and by sending itself to fifty addresses from each user's Outlook address book.
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.
The email, which contained no body text, included a dot-SCR screen saver dummy file within an executable RTF file, the spokeman said. When recipients attempt to open the file, a message is displayed stating: "Microsoft has encountered an error and...