Forensic Computing

Did you know about the Melissa virus that can infect files stored on and MacOS based systems. There are many first-hand reports of more than 300 organizations affected, covering more than 100,000 individual hosts.
Melissa was different from other macro viruses because of the speed at which it had spread. The first confirmed reports of Melissa were received on Friday, March 26, 1999. By Monday, March 29, it had reached more than 100,000 computers. Some sites had to take their mail systems off-line. One site reported receiving 32,000 copies of mail messages containing Melissa on their systems within 45 minutes.
Melissa was relatively non-destructive and very easily detected. Variants could be significantly more destructive or stealthy. We strongly encourage you to be aware of the risks posed by viruses and other computer security concerns at all times. There are other variants like Papa
which there have not been many reports about it.
if you fail to clean up the virus correctly and completely (for example, by not cleaning the If you practice antivirus precautions on a regular basis, you can protect yourself against Papa and other variants of Melissa. normal.dot file) you may expose confidential information at a later time. Now this virus Melissa macros is being rename as an .RTF extension. which not affect macros.