New Jersey Man Arrested for
Creating Melissa Virus
11.11 a.m. ET (1611 GMT) April 2, 1999
By Nancy Parello
TRENTON, N.J. — A man has been arrested and charged with originating the e-mail virus known as Melissa, the state attorney general's office announced Friday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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