__2000: __The "I Love You" virus spreads to 55 million computers around the world. The damage reaches billions of dollars.
It was the love letter heard round the world. A little over a year after the Melissa Virus shattered the internet's innocence, a student in the Philippines got the idea to craft a Visual Basic script that would e-mail itself to everyone in a user's Outlook address book.
The virus appeared in Asia and Europe, then crossed the pond to America's East Coast. By May 5, it had spread across the globe.
But it wasn't the coding that made the so-called Love Bug so effective. It was the social engineering.
The e-mail arrived as an attachment named LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs, and the subject line was a simple, "I Love You." Before it was done, an estimated 55 million people saw what appeared to be a proclamation of adoration in their inbox.
Around 3 million Windows users couldn't resist taking a look. They were unwittingly promulgating the net's first truly malicious chain letter.
While the Melissa virus had done little but spread, the Love Bug clobbered victim's photos and music files, and tried to download and install a Trojan horse designed to intercept passwords and send them back to the Philippines. That made it the direct ancestor of today's larger and more sophisticated botnets.
Police in the Philippines tracked the worm to a 23-year-old computer student, Onel de Guzman of Manila, but they were dismayed to find that their country had no law against sending out viruses. Legislators promptly corrected that oversight.
In the end, the Love Bug caused an estimated $10 billion in damage. And Windows users everywhere learned to never, ever open unsolicited attachments. Just kidding.
Source: Various
Photo: Onel de Guzman (left) enters his lawyer's office accompanied by his sister Irene de Guzman on May 11, 2000, in Manila.
Ed Wray/AP
See Also:
- Underground Services Let Virus Writers Check Their Work
- May 4, 1536: C U @ the Piazza
- May 4, 1904: U.S. Dives Into Panama Canal
- Jan. 6, 2000: Computer Glitch Fouls East Coast Air Traffic
- Feb. 7, 2000: Mafiaboy's Moment
- March 10, 2000: Pop Goes the Nasdaq!
- May 3, 2000: Geocaching Gets Geeks Into the Great Outdoors
- June 10, 2000: A London Bridge Is Swaying Hard
- June 24, 2000: President Goes Live on Net
- Aug. 17, 2000: Internet Crosses 50-Yard Line in U.S.
- Oct. 9, 2000: Ozone Hole Exposes Chilean City
