April 5, 1999 — Newsletter #22

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors…

Wow! What a response to the last Goodies To Go! My e-mail
box filled up with lots of encouragement for my continued use
of banner ads to keep the HTML Goodies site free. Thank you!
I love getting positive e-mail. Some of you even said you
hoped I would get rich. Hey, me too, but it doesn’t seem to
be happening any time soon….

On to the topic of Newsletter 22. Please remember, this
letter was written last Wednesday….

Here is that document you asked for… don’t show anyone
else ;-).

I got one! I got one! I got one! I actually got a Melissa
virus in my e-mail! It didn’t do any harm, though. I answer
all of my e-mail right off the server using Pine: I couldn’t
open an attachment if I wanted to. I do it on purpose, of
course. I know it’s low-tech, but I’m bug free.

Now the burning question…

Melissa? Hah? This is the name of a virus? Melissa? Who is
this named after? Melissa Ethridge? Melissa Gilbert?
Melissa Manchester? That song by the Allman Brothers? The
author of the virus?

Okay, next question. Who did this? I’ll bet the answer is
completely innocuous, rather than a Uni-Bomber manifesto
attack. I personally think it’s a present. I know we’d all
like to think this is some grand conspiracy, but I’ll bet
it’s little more than some 15- to 20-year old who is
attempting to impress a current love interest. He can claim
that her name is now out there for the world to see.

Now there’s something out there following in Melissa’s
footsteps called “papa” and I’m hearing that Melissa has
been mutated and is no longer sending out equal subject
lines; now it’s sending out blank subject lines.

Depending on your point of view, this is either very bad,
or great theater.

All Tuesday morning I received call after call from my
students who were positive that they had contracted the
Melissa virus. Well, I assured them that since Melissa
didn’t destroy data or break memory chips — and they
never opened an attachment — ten bucks said they didn’t
have it.

You see, Melissa is not a virus, per se. A good tech friend
of mine explained to me that Melissa is what he termed a
“worm.” It doesn’t harm the computer it infects. In fact,
it doesn’t really harm the mail server it shuts down. Think
of it this way: you take three rolls of toilet paper, bunch
up all the paper, and put it in the bowl. Then flush. That
clogging effect is what Melissa does.

Here’s what happens: You receive an e-mail that has an
attachment, usually an operating system specific file,
like WORD or EXCEL. The subject line is written to be
friendly and get your attention. Melissa, and Happy99 which
works much the same way, actually use the name of a person
you know because of how it was sent. More on that in a
moment.

When you open the e-mail, you get a cute nondescript
message asking you to open the attached file. This is common.
Viruses have to be opened, or run, to be enacted. Just
opening the e-mail alone won’t do it. You have to click to
fire it up. There was a short time a while back where screen
savers were sent around containing viruses. The big one
showed you a small fireworks show and then ate up your hard
drive.

That kind of attachment is sometimes referred to as a Trojan
Horse virus. It sits on your computer and looks completely
harmless until you click. Then all heck breaks loose. But
you don’t always have to click. Some Trojan Horse viruses
have time triggers: There’s a virus that sits on your
computer dead as a doornail until March 6th, then it
explodes (it’s called the Michelangelo virus because March
6th is Michelangelo’s birthday). It did a lot of damage
in Australia a few years back.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to Melissa.
Once you click on the file, WORD opens and attempts to run
the file, but first you get a warning message telling you
that the document contains a series of macros and asks if
you want to continue running the program. If you say “no”
you’re still safe. Say “yes” and you’ve infected 50 other
people.

You see, a “macro” is a small part of a program that helps
you do repetitive tasks. In the case of Melissa, it does a
repetitive task, all right. It takes the first 50 names from
your Microsoft address book and sends them the same
message you got using your name in the subject line. That
way it looks to the person receiving the mail as if you sent
them a nice friendly letter. It’s terrible and clever all at
the same time.

But again, Melissa is not a virus. It’s a worm. The mail
servers at Microsoft, Lucent, the U.S. Army, and a few
companies in Canada were shut down not because of any
destruction, but because during the morning rush to read
e-mail, 1000 people clicked on the file which produced
50,000 e-mails all at the same time. Poof! Lot’s of paper
in the toilet. Crash.

In case you’re wondering what is actually contained in the
WORD document that Melissa sends out, I was told by a
poor, unwilling participant that it was a list of like 80 Adult
sites. Plus, if you opened the file at the same time as the
date (i.e., you open the file at 3:29 on 3/29) the WORD
program writes a line from the first episode of the Simpsons
to the document. It’s something about Bart winning at
Scrabble. I never thought that episode was very funny.
Now, the Side Show Bob episodes, I love them!

So what can you do to protect yourself?

It’s ridiculously easy, actually. Know this first: no e-mail
text can enter a virus into your system. E-mail is just
that, e-mail. The virus is always contained in an attachment
and that attachment is like a vampire. You have to “invite
it in.” If you get an attachment — even from a friend —
do not open it. Call the friend and ask if this is true.
Once you get the OK, then you can go ahead.

Make sure your e-mail program is not set to automatically
download and run attachments. That would be bad.

Finally, install a virus program on your computer. And buy
one. This is not a time to go the freeware route and cut
a financial corner.

It used to be that you could basically take these virus
warnings with a grain of salt. Most of them are false
alarms. Remember the Good Times virus? The letter that
was sent out warning you of a virus was a hoax. It was
little more than a chain letter meant to scare you. There
was another sent out not too long ago that was supposedly
from Bill Gates saying that if you sent the letter to 1000
people you would receive some free software. A lot of
people believed the Budweiser Frogs screen saver contained
a virus, but it didn’t.

Until lately, computer viruses were mostly Urban Myths,
but not any more. Now they’re an actual threat and you
should be careful.

Finally — why do this?

I’m not a psychologist, but I’ll bet the answer has a lot to
do with impressing a group of people. I know in my little
clique of computer friends, we each get to wear the king’s
crown every time we come up with something new.

I’ll bet this person is now a hero to a group of about 10
people. He or she will get caught. Maybe a little fine or
some suspended jail time will be enacted, but for the most
part, the virus creator got what he or she wanted: the
attention of friends. I doubt this is an attack. It just
isn’t harmful enough. This isn’t personal.

Goodness help us if someone ever does go the personal
route and really knows what they’re doing. Melissa showed
that we Web-heads are all pretty faithful people. What
would have happened at Microsoft had Melissa been something
that erased or altered data? I hate to think of it.

These viruses will be around for as long as someone wants to
cause havoc or impress someone else. It’s human nature.
Hopefully the viruses and those that make them will stay on
the side of borderline funny, but I fear they might not.
I think Melissa was a glimpse into what people could
actually do if they ever did get personal with a business,
the government, or a hospital. What then?

Hopefully we’ll never need to find out.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And I’ve rambled for the 22nd time. That’s that. Thanks for
reading.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: April 15th is just around the corner. My
accountant (who is sitting here doing my taxes) informs me
that the first tax return form, from 1913, was less than
one page long. He also informs me that April 15 is only
one month removed from the Ides of March.