ILOVEYOU was so effective it actually held the Guinness World Record as the most ‘virulent’ virus of all time. A viral virus, by all accounts. Two young Filipino programmers, Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman, were named as the perps but because there were no laws against writing malware, their case was dropped and they went free.
It’s been almost 20 years since this virus was seen. By today’s standards it’s a tame virus, but in 2000 it was the most damaging malware event of all time. Likely, ILOVEYOU inspired many hackers to wield their keyboard as a weapon. Well, in 2000 malware was a bit of a myth. In fact, it was such a myth that malware could get away with being completely unsubtle. If you got an email today like the one that was sent around in 2000, you’d never open it. (We hope!) The virus came in an email with a subject line that said “I love you”.
Being curious types, people clicked into the email with aplomb—regardless of the fact the email was not from anyone they knew.
The malware was a worm that was downloaded by clicking on an attachment called ‘LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs’.
ILOVEYOU overwrote system files and personal files and spread itself over and over and over again. ILOVEYOU hit headlines around the world and still people clicked on the text—maybe to test if it really was as bad as it was supposed to be. Poking the bear with a stick, to use a metaphor.
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