Macro Viruses and the Melissa virus

Macro Viruses and the Melissa virus

Microsoft think it is doing it's clients a big favor with the addition of a programming language to Microsoft Word. When it comes to customer support, it had been a good idea, since it allows customers to automate and program inside their documents. For instance, whenever a document opened up, it may be designed to request the consumer for particulars that must definitely be joined into each document, like insurance plan amounts or telephone numbers.

Microsoft did not rely on this programming language ever getting used to show Word documents into virus infectors, but that is precisely what happened.

The very first Macro Virus was known as the idea virus. It had been developed in 1995 only to reveal that it had been possible to create the herpes virus in Word's Macro language. Once it had been proven, though, the concept required off. By 2004, nearly 75% of infections were macro infections.

When Word opens a document, it runs an ordinary number of macros. Once the product is infected, these normal macros happen to be changed, to ensure that when any future documents are opened up, their macros are infected too. Every Word document this computer touches has a copy from the virus, and can infect every other system that opens it.

Probably the most well-known macro virus up to now was Melissa. Virus programmer David L. Cruz named the code following a lap dancer he understood, and launched it at the end of March, 1999. Herpes sent personal files known as "List.doc" so it stated were passwords to 80 adult websites. Anybody who opened up the document would obtain passwords along with a free copy from the Melissa macro virus.

Melissa would then collect the very first fifty records within the address book, and email itself to them all. Melissa had infected a lot of systems that by March 26th, it had been shutting lower mail servers with all the infected emails traveling over the 'net.