Named after an exotic dancer from Florida, it was created by David L. Smith in 1999. It started asan infected Word documentthat was posted up on the alt.sex usenet group, claiming to be a list of passwords for pornographic sites. This got people curious and when it was downloaded and opened, it would trigger the macro inside and unleashits payload.The virus will mail itself to the top 50 people in the user’s email address bookand this caused an increase of email traffic, disrupting the email services of governments and corporations. It alsosometimes corrupted documentsby inserting a Simpsons reference into them.via MSN CanadaSmith was eventuallycaughtwhen they traced the Word document to him. The file was uploaded using a stolen AOL account and with their help, law enforcement was able to arrest him less than aweek since the outbreak began.He cooperated with the FBI in capturing other virus creators, famous among them the creator of the Anna Kournikova virus. For his cooperation, he served only 20 months and paid a fine of $5000 of his 10 year sentence. The virusreportedlycaused $80 millionin damages.
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