B   E   W   A   R   E !  !  !  !

               If you receive an email with a subject line with the phrase ILOVEYOU in it…..DONT OPEN the attachment named Love-Letter-For-You.Txt.vbs. Who would not be tempted to open it, when it has the word everybody longs to hear and especially upon reading that a love letter for you. You might be very excited to open it ! Well, beware! Because it may damage or corrupt your files.

               

              Viruses are the biggest security threat today. They modify the programs without permission with occassional disastrous results. Viruses are actually computer programs that are designed to spread themselves from file to another, on a single computer and eventually do some additional harm.

              From among the many viruses that we have today, let me discuss with you about the very sweet virus called ILOVEYOU VIRUS. It was first reported Thursday on May 4,2000 afternoon, Hongkong time and early morning in Europe.It had caused companies and government offices damaged by shutting off mail systems, servers, banking systems and in some cases caused problems with pagers and /or paging services. 

              The author of this ILOVEYOU VIRUS was Rodel Lequip and Onel de Guzman. They are couple coming from the Philippines. Guzman was a student at AMAComputer Collegein Makati who dropped at a few months before the virus was released (around early may,2000)

              The love bug infects users who are using microsoft windows and/ormicrosoft outlook. Victims would received e mail with the heading “ILOVEYOU”. The menace clogged web servers, overwrote personal files and caused corporate IT Managers to shut down e-mail system

                This virus arrives as e-mail with the subject “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment named “Love-Letter-For-You.txt.vbs”. Opening the attachment infects your computer. The infections first scans your PC’s memory for passwords, which are sent back to virus’s creator( A Website in the phils which has since been shutdown) The infections then replicates itself to everyone in your Outlook adress book. Finally the infection corrupts files ending wt, .vbs,.vbc,.js,.css,.wsh,.sct,.hta,.jpg,.jpeg,.mp2,.mp3 by overwhilming them with a copy of itself.

                You can get this virus in only one way. If you receive it , don’t execute it. Just delete it IMMEDIATELY, even if the message is from the one you know well.

                 The unfortunate fact was that the Philippines didn’t have any anti- computer hacking laws in place at the time. New legislation was introduced in June, but could not be applied to the Love bug case(Post facto law).