My videos from 2009, including my very first video from November 2008
Curated by: danooct1 (198 videos)
The Melissa Macro Virus/Worm appeared in 1999, and downed several email servers due to the large amount of emails and traffic it generated. It mails itself to the first 50 contacts found in the address book, and then infects all other Word Documents that are opened. Its payload activates when the day and the minutes are equal to each other, when it inserts "Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here." into the active document. The line comes from an episode of the TV show "The Simpsons". Later variants deleted critical system files or inserted different text strings. The author, David Smith, a.k.a. Kwyjibo, was caught by the F.B.I. and sentenced to 20 months in a federal prison and a $5,000 fine.