NEW YORK -- Despite a weekend of warnings, more than 50,000 computers at about 100 sites around the world have been infected by the "Melissa" e-mail virus, computer security experts estimated Monday.
Security experts had warned computer users returning to work Monday that Melissa messages usually contain the subject line "Important message." The body says "Here is that document you asked for . . . don't show it to anyone else" with a winking, smiling face formed by the punctuation marks '-).The virus directs computers to send more infected documents into cyberspace in such numbers that it could overload and crash e-mail servers, security experts said. And recipients may think they are receiving e-mail from a friend because the virus plunders address books.
However, the virus apparently causes no direct damage to a computer's memory or programs.
Melissa is a macro, a computer script for automating tasks in the creation of documents written in Microsoft's Word, a word-processing program. It uses Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program to send a document to the first 50 addresses in the user's address book.
All new Word documents created on an infected computer will contain the virus, too. And every time a Word document is opened after that, the document -- and its potentially sensitive information -- will be sent to 50 other people.
"It's safe to say we're bracing ourselves," said Katherine Fithen, a manager with the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
She based her estimate of more than 50,000 infected computers on the voluntary reports CERT had received as of this morning.
She said the team had no reports yet of security breaches or overloaded e-mail systems.