(3/29/99)

It has an innocent sounding name, "Melissa." But today, the Melissa Computer Virus seems to be exploding worldwide and causing disruptions for hundreds of companies and institutions.

Among the Utah victims: Hill Air Force Base, which was forced to take emergency action. News Specialist John Hollenhorst has details.

Melissa is essentially a piece of rogue e-mail, disguised as a message from a friend.

If you innocently do the wrong thing when you read the message, Melissa can suddenly multiply and possibly overwhelm computer networks.

That threat forced Hill Air Force Base to shut down e-mail on 10,000 computers.

The Base's critical functions were not imperiled because they rely on other computers. But office e-mail was disrupted beginning Friday afternoon.

Ronald Ray works with Hill's information systems. He says, "There were strange e-mails being recieved on base. When we started to check, we found out they were proliferating, so we began to shut down our network."

Over the weekend, nearly 50 computer experts worked overtime, protecting Hill's computers from a bombardment of Melissa virus e-mail.

Ray says, "We blocked a piece of network equipment. And it stopped anywhere from 900,000 to a million messages from coming onto the base."

Those Melissa messages could have overwhelmed and crashed Hill's e-mail processing computers. Similar things are happening on a bigger or smaller scale nationwide.

Bruce Reese, president of KSL's parent company Bonneville International Corporation, recieved two Melissa messages Friday afternoon. They appeared to be innocent e-mail from a friend in Washington.

Reese says, "I don't know if I retransmitted the virus to anybody else. I don't think I did."

If Reese had innocently clicked his mouse on an icon at the bottom of the e-mail he would have fallen into the trap of Melissa'a unknown designer.

Reeses's message from Washington would have been transmitted automatically to the top 50 names on Reese's own e-mail address list. If each recipient did the same thing, that's 50, times 50, times 50 and so on. The virus designer evidently hoped to swamp the world's computer networks.

Reese says, "I don't understand why people spend the time and energy and time to do this."

Hill Air Force Base dodged an electronic bullet, this time.

According to Ray, "We're not wiping our brow right yet. You know we've still got some cleanup work to do here before we open ourselves up. I think it's a good wakeup call for everybody."

That's a particular worry for the military. Melissa is relatively harmless, but it's strategy is clever. And it could be used again, by a prankster, or a terrorist, with much more destructive intent.

If you recieved a copy of the Melissa virus, the e-mail subject line will say, "Important Message from" So-and-so. The text will say, "Here is that document you asked for. Don't show anyone else."

By all means, do not click the "attachment" icon. That will retransmit the virus.