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David L. Smith (born c. 1968) is the writer of the Melissa worm. The Melissa worm, also known as "Mailissa" " Simpsons " " Kwyjibo " or "Kwejeebo" is a mass-mailing macro virus, In March 1999, the then 31-year-old programmer released the Melissa worm in Aberdeen Township, New Jersey[1] by deliberately posting an infected document to an alt.sex Usenet newsgroup from a stolen AOL account. Aberdeen Township is a Township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. New Jersey ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. altsex is a Usenet Newsgroup. In the 1990s the newsgroup was popular Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system It is believed that Smith named the virus after a lap-dancer he had known in Florida. A lap dance is a specific type of Sex dance offered in some Strip clubs or (somewhat more formal gentlemen's clubs in which the patron is seated and the Florida ( is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the He called himself Kwyjibo, but was shown to be identical to macrovirus writers VicodinES and Alt-F11, who had several Word-files with the same characteristic Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), a serial number that was earlier generated with the network card MAC address as a component. A Globally Unique Identifier or GUID (ˈguːɪd or /ˈgwɪd/ is a special type of identifier used in Software applications in order to provide a reference number In Computer networking a Media Access Control address ( MAC address) or Ethernet Hardware Address ( EHA) hardware address The virus forwards itself to the first 50 addresses in a person’s Outlook address book. It is also known to damage documents by putting in the text, “twenty-two, plus triple-word score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game’s over. I’m outta here”, a reference to The Simpsons episode Bart the Genius, from where the name 'kwyjibo' also originates. " Bart the Genius " is the second episode of The Simpsons ' first season, which originally aired on the Fox network

Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Lockheed Martin, and Lucent Technologies were forced to shut down their e-mail gateways due to the vast amount of e-mail the virus was generating. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer Lockheed Martin ( is a large multinational Aerospace manufacturer and advanced technology Company formed in 1995 by the merger of Lucent Technologies was a technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs. Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving The Melissa virus was the most costly computer outbreak to date, causing more than $80 million in damages to North American businesses. In December of the same year, Smith pleaded guilty to creating and releasing the virus. He was one of the first people to ever be prosecuted for writing a virus. The sentence, originally ten years (of a maximum forty year sentence) in a United States federal prison, was reduced to twenty months and a $5,000 fine when Smith began working undercover with the FBI shortly after his capture. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Initially only working eighteen hours per week, Smith was soon bumped up to a forty hour work week. He was tasked with gaining connections among authors of new viruses, keeping an ear to the ground for software vulnerabilities, mitigating damage caused by these nefarious activities, and contributing to the capture of the perpetrators.

The task of tracing the worm to its originator was accomplished through the efforts of security analyst Jonathan James, who collaborated with the FBI on the case and who also traced the authors of the ILOVEYOU worm. Jonathan Joseph James ( December 12, 1983 - May 18, 2008) aka The ILOVEYOU virus also known as VBS/Loveletter and Love Bug virus is a Computer virus written in VBScript. Fredrik Björck also contributed to the identification of a website owned by VicodinES, later identified as David L. Smith.

References

  1. ^ Kocieniewski, David. "Man Is Charged In the Creation Of E-Mail Virus", The New York Times, April 3, 1999. Events 1043 - Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) Accessed January 31, 2008. Events 1504 - France cedes Naples to Aragon. 1606 - Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common "Investigators from the Attorney General's Computer Analysis and Technology Unit then spent three days sorting through records of thousands of customers' files and electronic transmissions from the provider, Monmouth Internet Corp. of Red Bank, N. J. , and determined that the telephone line used to send the first copy of the Melissa virus was wired into Mr. Smith's apartment in Aberdeen Township, according to the New Jersey Attorney General, Peter G. Verniero. "

Sources

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