ILoveYou. With those words the most famous computer virus in history was created. Its author appealed to love (or the need for love) to make this malware infiltrate millions of devices around the world. He knew that with those words, several users would fall into the trap. And he was not wrong.
The virus appeared on the internet on May 4, 2000. It was released to the world by means of an email with the subject “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment with the name (LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs). When the document was opened, not only did the user’s computer get infected, but this worm also sent itself to the email addresses that the user had saved in Outlook.
It was born in the Philippines and spread immediately: it affected teams in the United States, Europe and Latin America. Five days after going out into the world, 18 mutations of the virus were identified. And in less than ten days, 50 million infected computers were registered, which represented 10% of the computers connected to the Internet at that time. It is estimated that this virus produced damages valued at more than 10,000 million euros.
What it did and why ILoveYou did spread?
The virus wrote the files with the extensions .VBS and .VBE with its code. It deleted files with extensions .JS, .JSE, .CSS, .WSH, .SCT and .HTA, and created others with the same name and .VBS extension in which it entered its code. It also locates the files with the extension .JPG, .JPEG, .MP3 and .MP2, deleted them, and created others where the new nomenclature is formed by the name and the previous extension plus VBS as the new real extension.
It is believed that Onel de Guzmán was responsible for the creation of this computer virus. He himself confessed to having transmitted the virus “accidentally”. Apparently I LOVE YOU was part of a university thesis, a guide on how to steal secret codes over the Internet or how to break into a foreign computer and take control of it.
Among the victims of the attacks were figures such as the Pentagon, the British Parliament, or the Federal Reserve, among others. From that moment on, security and privacy became one of the main concerns of the Internet user, forever changing the global vision of new technologies.
After the attack, the large companies in the sector began to work with the virus code to develop a vaccine that could prevent its spread. On the websites of these companies you could find a program capable of removing the love virus from your computer, as well as the patch that had to be installed on the mail servers.
