Scourge · March 26 1999

The Pestilence of Melissa

Chronicle

On 26 March 1999 David L. Smith posted to the alt.sex newsgroup a Word document that promised passwords to adult sites and hid a macro. Once opened, it mailed itself to the first 50 entries in the victim's Outlook address book, whose owners opened it because they trusted the sender. The mail flood forced companies and government agencies to shut down their email gateways; the FBI estimated about $80 million in damage. Smith was arrested on 1 April and later sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

Lesson learned

It taught the world that an attachment from a friend is not necessarily a gift, and pushed office software to disable macros by default.

Prayer of reparation

O Melissa, who came knocking under a friend's name, deliver us from self-running macros and over-generous address books. Amen.

How it is remembered

Remembered by keeping macros disabled in downloaded documents and checking with the sender before opening the file "you asked for".