Happy birthday, Melissa

Good grief, has it really been five years since the Melissa worm exploded onto the scene? Yes, according to this article from the SeattlePI.com archives.

Melissa was the first really "mainstream" worm to spread over the Internet, exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft software to infect 1 million computers in North America; and, consequently, perhaps the first "star" virus of the modern age.

To commemorate the anniversary, Wired News' Michelle Delio interviews various security experts to get their views on how far we've come in the years since.

Alas, not very: we're still bedeviled by worms that spread via e-mail, exploiting Windows security holes, poorly administered networks and/or end-user gullibility. Even worse, we've come to accept this as "the new normal." One expert interviewed by Delio points out just how big an adjustment we've all had to make:

"Melissa was Paleolithic times by today's standards," said George Smith, a senior fellow with GlobalSecurity.org. "You'd think five years is enough time to get something done about viruses?

"Imagine a world in which everything is done with the diligence exhibited by those who are developing network architectures and software," said Smith. "It would be a world where teenage boys seated at computers can contaminate everything simply by bringing to bear the intellectual power necessary to read a comic book.

"You'd have to grow your own food. Going outside the house would be impossible because you'd be continuously hit by paintballs and rolls of sodden toilet paper. Your car would have its wiring disappear, eaten by cybernetic rats. Your grass would die because someone would constantly be spraying dog piss on it and the police would decline to intervene. You wouldn't be able to hold a phone conversation because strangers would always be shouting 'undeliverable mail,' 'hi,' 'your bill,' 'your account,' 'see attached document,' 'thanks,' 'look at this,' 'here is the information you requested,' 'you have sent a virus,' and so on."