Published: March 7, 2025
Author: Nico

Forty years in IT, scars to prove it—snapped a golf shaft, bled on a motherboard, and faced a worm that nearly broke the internet. March 26, 1999: a quiet Friday ‘til one email hit. The Melissa worm—a digital Goliath—crashed Microsoft, Intel, even the Marines. Inboxes drowned, servers fried, $80 million in damage. Me? A lone Exchange admin—console, stale coffee, and grit. Could I stop it? Here’s the tale: my fight, a wild twist about adult sites building the net, and a needy cat who supervised it all.

The Threat Emerges

It starts with David Smith. March 26, 1999—he hijacks an AOL account and drops a bomb on Usenet’s alt.sex group: “list.doc.” The bait? Passwords to 80 adult sites. People click—human nature. They open it in Word, and a macro virus wakes up. Melissa infects Normal.dot, hijacks Outlook, emails itself to your top 50 contacts. Subject: “Important Message From [your name].” Body: “Here’s that document you asked for. Don’t show anyone else ;-)”—winky face and all.
Here’s the kicker: adult sites like Smith’s lure? They built the internet’s bones. By ‘99, they pioneered streaming, e-commerce, bandwidth—pushing ISPs to grow fast. Usenet’s alt.sex drew millions online. Melissa just rode that wave—a flood. One click, 50 emails. Fifty clicks, 2,500. Hours in, Microsoft’s email dies. Intel’s down. The Marines too. Over 100,000 PCs hit, maybe a million accounts. Damage? $80 million.

The Admin’s Battle

Friday afternoon, Wall Street—my inbox screams. I’m on Exchange Server 5.5, email’s backbone. Melissa’s clogging the Private Information Store—millions of emails, one “list.doc” feeding ‘em all. Single-instance storage’s my edge: kill that doc, every message flops—no macro, no worm. My ginger cat stares at the server lights—supervisor’s here.
No “kill all” button. MDBVU32’s my tool—raw data scrolls, “list.doc” glows. Or ExMerge—export mailboxes, ditch the bad, reimport clean. Both need the Store stopped—email goes dark. I punch “net stop msexchangeis,” screen blinks, and I’m racing. Melissa doubles fast—one click, 50 emails. An hour’s my window.

The Climax: Me vs. Worm

Hands fly. MDBVU32’s up—“list.doc” sits there. I rename it—LIST_OFF.DOC. No macro, no spread. ExMerge churns—export, filter “Important Message,” reimport. Thirty minutes, server’s back—email’s live. I hold my breath. Success—at 10 emails, I win. “Grenade with no pin,” I tell ‘em—users see blanks, shrug. But Melissa’s a beast—one click pre-purge, 50 more fly from a local cache. March 26? I nailed it early—5 minutes flat. Big firms? Too slow—hours lost to Goliath.

The Aftermath

Melissa died slow—Microsoft and AV squads killed servers March 27. McAfee, Symantec updates fried the macro. ISPs blocked “Important Message.” April 1, FBI nabbed Smith—metadata snitched. Twenty months jail, $5,000 fine. My win? In a small shop, I could’ve been the lone hero—5 minutes of glory. Adult sites built the net; Melissa tested it—trust can crash you.

Wrap-Up

Melissa wasn’t the nastiest—just fastest of ‘99. I could’ve been that David—perfect timing, Goliath down. Salute your IT crew—they’re the shield. Vid’s coming—@ITDisasterFixes—15 minutes of chaos, cat included. Pin today’s threats: Malwarebytes. More sagas soon—stick around!