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Minor outbreak of Melissa Virus detected

updated 11:54 am EST, Thu January 18, 2001


Ray Pfeffer notes that MessageLabs has detected a minor outbreak of Melissa.W virus:

"The Melissa code is contained in a Macintosh Office 2001 Word document, which it appears cannot be decoded properly by old versions of many virus scanners. MessageLabs therefore recommend that you update your scanner to a version that can cope with Macintosh Office 2001. The outbreak is currently being tracked on our threatlist as W2001MAC/Melissa.W. Most copies have come from the UK, which is where the outbreak originated, but we have also seen one copy from South Africa."


by MacNN Staff

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  1. 0

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    01/18, 02:05pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Outbreak

    It should be noted that Symantec is also looking into this. Weather this effects the Macs yet i don't know. As soon as i find out i'll let you know.

  1. 0

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    01/18, 02:29pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Another reason...

    I don't use MS products. They're so feature bloated that these macro viruses are taken as a given, like regular viruses on PCs, rather than as huge holes in the running software.

    I've been using Clarisworks since v2.0, and no viruses for me yet!

  1. 0

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    01/18, 02:50pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    MS = Virus attack

    Take a tip : When you buy a Mac, remove all Microsoft stuff (i know it's a long way) and don't buy (or download) anything from them. Their products are bloated with bugs and memory ogres. Need to read Word document? IcWord is perfect and cost 20$.Then you are 99% free of any virus. I use NAV for the sake of PC users, they should pay us for this and i did not meet any virus since over 10 years of use of Macs.

  1. 0

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    01/18, 02:52pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    MS = Virus attack

    Take a tip : When you buy a Mac, remove all Microsoft stuff (i know it's a long way) and don't buy (or download) anything from them. Their products are bloated with bugs and memory ogres. Need to read Word document? IcWord is perfect and cost 20$.Then you are 99% free of any virus. I use NAV for the sake of PC users, they should pay us for this and i did not meet any virus since over 10 years of use of Macs.

  1. 0

    Joined:

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    01/18, 02:52pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    MS = Virus attack

    Take a tip : When you buy a Mac, remove all Microsoft stuff (i know it's a long way) and don't buy (or download) anything from them. Their products are bloated with bugs and memory ogres. Need to read Word document? IcWord is perfect and cost 20$.Then you are 99% free of any virus. I use NAV for the sake of PC users, they should pay us for this and i did not meet any virus since over 10 years of use of Macs.

  1. 0

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    01/18, 04:57pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    bugs: macs vs pc

    It should be noted that as of this writing there are approx 300 viruses for the Mac. There are also 48,390 for the PC. Aren't you glad you got a Mac?
    As far as this new Melissa virus goes, just don't open any doc called ANNIV.DOC and everything should be cool. That doesn't mean that the name of the doc won't change, but for now it is called ANNIV.DOC.

  1. 0

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    01/18, 06:08pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Melissa on the Mac

    Just set MS Word so it will prompt you before running any attached macros. With out macros running automatically when the document opens the virus has no teeth.

  1. 0

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    01/19, 01:04pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Symantec fix is posted...

    Check out your LiveUpdate, it appears that the Symantec fix has been posted to its LiveUpdate servers. Not sure if the downloadable version of the definitions has been posted yet.

  1. 0

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    01/19, 02:18pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    didn't affect me

    I got it, with Mac Office 2001 - as USUAL, MSNBC was raising their scare tactics. The thing did nothing at all! But MSNBC says "Oh, Macs can be affected because they can pass the file along to a Windows machine where it will do damage" Uhh.. that's not "affecting the Mac" that's "Windows is a virus pool" yet again.
    Typical MSNBC FUD

  1. 0

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    01/19, 08:53pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    what does this mean?

    So, what can this do to a mac user?

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