Man arrested for Melissa virus
Associated Press
April 2, 1999 7:57 AM PT
URL: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2236028,00.html
UPDATED 8:30 AM PT
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)-- A man has been arrested and charged with originating
the e-mail virus known as Melissa, the state attorney general's office
announced today.
David L. Smith, 30, of Aberdeen was arrested Thursday night at his
brother's house in nearby Eatontown, said Rita Malley, a spokeswoman for
Attorney General Peter Verniero.
Smith originated the virus, which caused worldwide e-mail disruption
earlier this week, from his apartment in Aberdeen, Malley said.
New Jersey Attorney General Peter Verniero will hold a press conference in
Trenton at 10 AM PT to discuss the arrest.
Melissa appeared last Friday and spread rapidly around the world on Monday
like a malicious chain letter, causing affected computers to fire off
dozens of infected messages to friends and colleagues and swamping e-mail
systems.
It disrupted the operations of thousands of companies and government
agencies whose employees were temporarily unable to communicate by e-mail.
No information was immediately available as to what charges Smith faced.
Michael Vatis, a federal prosecutor and director of the National
Infrastructure Protection Center based at FBI headquarters, had said
earlier this week that the author of a virus can be charged with a felony
computer crime carrying a term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to
$250,000.
AOL helped
Smith was snared with the help of America Online technicians, and a
computer task force composed of federal and state agents, Malley said.
Earlier this week, experts had said there were clues that the virus writer
had distributed the virus using an account stolen from America Online 15
months ago.
Several antivirus software makers, including McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro
and Sophos, posted patches on their Web sites that detect and reject the
Melissa virus.
It comes in the form of an e-mail, usually containing the subject line
``Important Message.'' It appears to be from a friend or colleague.
Smiley face
The body of the e-mail message says, ``Here is that document you asked for
... don't show it to anyone else'' with a winking smiley face formed by
the punctuation marks ;-).
Attached to the message is a document file. If the user opened that file,
the virus dug into the user's address book and sends infected documents to
the first 50 addresses.
Smith, whom Malley described as a ``computer guy,'' was being held at the
Monmouth County Jail. Malley could not immediately say where Smith works,
but said the virus didn't originate there but in his apartment.
Margaret Kane, ZDNN, contributed to this report.
-o-
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Received on Sat Apr 3 10:56:57 1999