Now a new variant of Melissa threatens to get past the defenses designed to protect us from the original. Reports of the new strain, Melissa. W, started appearing midweek, mainly in Europe. Not surprisingly, the major antivirus companies are rushing to get out their solutions. Most of the first fixes will likely be definitions specific to Melissa.
Some products can identify the new strain of the virus without yet repairing it.
The definition will also be part of McAfee 's next weekly update, due to become available on January 24. Symantec expects to have a fix available on Friday. In most ways, the new Melissa acts pretty much like the old one. The macro-based worm comes alive when you open an infected Word file, spreading to other documents and mailing itself as an attachment to the first 50 listings in your Microsoft Outlook address book. If one of the recipients opens the attachment, the cycle starts all over again.