But once the victim clicked on what seemed to be a text file called ‘Love-Letter-For-You’, the virus would install itself on the PC and then the real problems would begin.įirstly, the ILY virus would replace all files with media extensions such as images, documents and MP3s with copies of itself. “Kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me,” read the email. The email resembled a love letter.Įssentially what would happen is the victim would receive an email from a person he or she knew, entitled ‘ILoveYou’. The way the ILY virus operated was as follows. It was the simple principle behind the ‘I Love You’ (ILY) virus which took advantage of human physiology, namely one of humanity’s most base desires (…to be loved). The worm demonstrated the global reach of malware to businesses that was rapidly embracing the PC, and showed how a cleverly designed virus could take advantage of social engineering for the first time to achieve a devastating impact.
It was seventeen years ago, or May 2000 or be exact when the ‘I love you’ bug (also known as ‘Love Bug’ or ‘Love ‘Letter’) attacked tens of millions of Windows personal computers. With the WannaCry ransomware still fresh in the collective awareness, now is perhaps a good time to look back at one of the earliest pieces of malware that impacted millions of computers around the world.
