A wide variety of viruses with different capabilities have existed throughout history. Some have become famous for their virulence, others for certain aspects of it and this one we will tell you about for a certain date. He Melissa virus It was famous, not for causing damage to the systems it infected, but for appearing shortly before the year 2000.
In case you don’t know, months before the arrival of the year 2000, a kind of collective psychosis was generated due to possible computer and electronic chaos. Many speculated that the computers were not prepared for the date change and that this was going to create chaos.
The reality is that absolutely nothing happened, it was an unfounded fear that turned into a giant snowball. For something serious to happen was really complicated, especially at a time when computers were not as widespread as they are today. Note that smartphones, tablets, SmartTVs and many other smart devices did not exist either.
The virus that increased fear before the “Y2K effect”
The 12 bells rang, someone almost rang the cake eating grapes and little else happened as we left the 20th century behind and entered the 21st century. The planes continued to work, the traffic lights, the parking meters, the televisions and everything, in general.
Months before, an incident occurred that, due to proximity, accentuated in many the fear of the so-called «2000 effect«. In March 1999, a computer virus appeared that caused some chaos. We are talking about the Melissa virus, which was spread through email.
The virus in question was developed by David L. Smith and was propagated through Word and Outlook. Due to this characteristic, this computer virus mostly affected Windows users. We have to highlight that, at that time, Word (and Office) as well as Outlook were exclusive to Microsoft operating systems, not compatible with Apple devices.
Melissa was a virus quite simple, but with a large capacity for replicate. The user received an infected Word file in their email. When the file was opened, the virus was activated and was sent to the first 50 addresses in the user’s contact book.
Because Melissa replicated automatically without requiring the user to do anything, it expanded rapidly. The subject of the email was created to be attractive, using the text “Important Message From [Nombre]”. The “Name” field was automatically filled based on the name of the contact in the email.
Something interesting is that Melisa did not cause damage on the affected user’s system. This virus did not delete files and did not cause damage to the hardware, that was not its objective. What it generates is great congestion on the email servers due to the volume of emails it sent.
As I sent hundreds of emails, it caused many networks and email services to slow down enormously. Some of the systems even went down due to the avalanche of emails.
David L. Smith was arrested and convicted for the chaos caused by the Melissa virus. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and received a huge fine for all the damage caused.
The Melissa virus was a positive thing, as it helped companies improve computer security. After this, implement new practices that will prevent system infections by email. Many antiviruses have been updated to detect these threats. It was used to educate users, telling them to be wary of emails from strangers with attachments.
