“A crippling and embarrassing virus has spent the day marauding
countless e-mail inboxes around the world, replicating itself to
end-user address books and sending an exhaustive list of
pornographic Web sites to everyone therein.”
“Dubbed the “Melissa” virus, the culprit has hampered — and in
some cases entirely shut down — e-mail systems for companies the
world over. For example, Microsoft has put a halt to all outgoing
e-mails throughout the company.”
“Some users at Microsoft received an e-mail that contained a
Word document that has attached to it a macro virus,” said Andrew
Dixon, group product manager for Office at Microsoft. “If that
document is opened and the macro virus is allowed to run, it is
possible [for the virus] to send e-mail to a number of other
users.”
“Dixon said that Friday afternoon, Microsoft “temporarily turned
off outgoing e-mail” company-wide to guard against spreading the
virus.”