PS: I LOVE YOU
One year after the Melissa virus, which we mentioned in the previous stop on our journey of the deadliest viruses in history, a new threat comes to shake our soul and body, as promising love, invades our computer via email, and in the form of a Worm, ultimately manages to destroy important parts of our system (and our psychology, of course).
The reason, then, for the infamous I LOVE YOU virus, originating from the distant Philippines, appeared on the stage (and behind the scenes) in the distant year 2000.
The I LOVE YOU virus, sometimes referred to as Love Letter, was a “I LOVE YOU.” The email promised a love letter from a “secret admirer.” Attached was a file named “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs.”
Files of type .vbs are executable files, written in Visual Basic Scripting. The last file extension was often hidden by default on Windows computers, leading unsuspecting users to believe it was a regular text file.
However, upon opening the attached file “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.” the worm caused damage to the computer, specifically actions such as:
– Saved itself in multiple folders on the victim's hard drive.
– Added new entries to the registry
– Replaced files of many different types with copies of itself. In contrast, the Melissa virus sent copies only to the first 50 contacts.
– Sent itself to other users via IRC clients and email.
– It downloaded and ran a file called win-bugsfix.exe, which stole passwords and emailed them to the hacker.
The suspect for creating the worm was Onel de Guzman, but the Philippine authorities could not prove his guilt. Overall, we should emphasize that it cost $5.5 billion to deal with it.
We are renewing our appointment for next Friday to meet another worm-type virus.
Stay tuned to SecNews!
