What is the “Prilissa” macro virus?
It is a Word 97 macro virus delivered via e-mail in an attached Word document that can only affect users if the attachment is opened on December 25th. The e-mail contains the subject line “Message From [UserName]” and/or contains the message body “This document is very Important and you’ve GOT to read this!!!” If the attached Word document is opened on December 25th and the macro virus is enabled (i.e. it is allowed to run), it can propagate itself by sending e-mail with the infected document to a number of recipients. The virus reads a list of e-mail addresses from the Outlook Address Book and sends an e-mail message to the first 50 recipients programmatically. The virus also can reformat the hard disk drive of Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 computers and will overlay the attached document with random shapes.
