Het complot van de serial ID nummers eist z'n eerste slachtoffer.
Thanks to a controversial serial ID number, researchers seem to have found the virus writer. Two software engineers have extracted information from the Melissa virus that appears to lead to an account on America Online Inc. and a Web site that, if matched with a person, could lead law enforcement officials to the author of the prolific virus. The key is a controversial serial number, called the Global Unique Identifier or GUID, which is included in files created with Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT) Office, as well as some other applications, including Visual Basic. The serial number raised the concern of privacy advocates just a few weeks ago for its ability to be used to trace certain documents back to their creator. That's exactly what two software engineers have done. Using the unique number, Richard M. Smith, president of software tools developer Phar Lap Software Inc., and Fredrik Bjorck, a Swedish PhD student at Stockholm University's Department of Computer and System Sciences, have tracked down the virus writer to at least one specific Web site.
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