Melissa virus threatens MS email users

Referred to as one of the deadliest computer viruses ever, Melissa, aMicrosoft Word macro virus, is replicating itself across the Internetthrough Microsoft Outlook-based email. How serious is Melissa? Well, thisis the first time the U.S. government has released a warning about acomputer virus, so it's actually pretty serious, unlike previous virusthreats such as Michelangelo. Security experts are saying that Melissacontaminated all kinds of government, military, and commercial email systemsover the weekend, including Microsoft's internal email.

The Melissa virus can affect anyone using Word 97 or 2000 with Outlook 97 or2000. Melissa is delivered as a Word document attached to an email message.The subject line contains the text "Important Message From "UserName" and/orcontains the text "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyoneelse ;-)" in the message body. Anyone who is affected by this virus willdiscover that Outlook has forwarded the infected email to the first 50 usersin their address book.

So how do you protect yourself from this? Well, by default, Word 97 and2000 are setup to protect you from macro viruses, so be sure to turn thisback on if you've disabled the feature. In Office 97, you can enable thisfeature by opening the Word Options dialog (Tools-->Options) and finding the"Macro Virus Protection" option on the General tab. In Office 2000, you mustchoose Tools-->Macro-->Security and then select High or Medium security.

If this virus has already attacked you, make sure your macro securitysettings are turned back on as the virus can disable this feature.

For more information about Office viruses in general, please visit theMicrosoft Anti-Virus Center. The company also has some Melissa-specific information on the Office UpdateWeb site