The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center issued a warning Sunday about the dangers of the recently discovered 'Melissa' virus.
"The NIPC has received reports of significant network degradation and email outages at major corporations and Internet Service Providers," the FBI's statement read. "[But there are] no reports of the virus causing any alteration of or damage to any data contained in the infected systems."
NIPC director Michael Vatis said that email users could reduce the impact of the virus' proliferation by notifying a system administrator if they see any messages with the subject line: "Important Message From..."
The agency warned that spreading a virus was a criminal offense, and that it would be investigating how Melissa is being proliferated. The virus spreads by sending emails from an infected user's account to addresses in their personal address book.
The virus is activated when a recipient opens a Microsoft Word document which will then launch a macro that sends up to 50 emails with the virus.
"The [virus] has the capability of causing a denial of service and degraded computer network performance, which could result in system administrators' having to shut down affected networks and email servers," the FBI statement said.
This is the first time the NIPC has issued a warning concerning a computer virus, according to an NIPC spokesperson.
Users and system administrators can consult the Computer Emergency Response Team for more information on how to deal with the Melissa Virus.
