Melissa: The computer virus is believed to be named after a stripper that the developer of this virus called David L. Smith met. This is a mass mailing macro virus. Smith pleaded guilty for developing the virus and was sentenced for 10 years in prison.

He spent 20 months and paid a fine of $5,000. The virus is believed to have mailed itself on to the Outlook contacts of the contaminated user.

I Love You: Also referred to as ‘Lover letter’, this was a computer worm that attacked thousands of windows personal computers. The worm sent out mails with the subject line, ‘I love you’ and an attachment that read ‘Love letter for you’, back in 2000 in the Philippines. The worm used mailing list as it is source to target, unlike Melissa, I Love you worm would send mails using all the contacts on the outlook list.

 This was a major attack that affected the whole world with at the least 10 percent of all internet connected computers being compromised. This took estimate $15 billion to clean up and trace the worm and eliminate it.

Code Red: Another computer worm, code red attacked the internet back in 2001, most for windows that ran on Microsoft's IIS web server. This worm was researched by two employees of eEye digital, Marc Maiffret and Ryan Permeh, who named it Code Red because at the time they were drinking a code red mountain dew. This worm spread through a common vulnerability called buffer overflow.

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