The ILOVEYOU Virus

Group 3
INTRODUCTION
•The ILOVEYOU virus or
LoveBug was one of the most
dangerous viruses. It was able
to infect Tens of millions of
computers worldwide.
CREATION
The virus was created by Onel De
Guzman, a poor filipino living in Manila.
He created the virus to steal other peoples
account passwords in order to access their
internet account, because he couldn’t
afford internet access at the time.
How the virus works
The virus would be in an email that users receive
titled ILOVEYOU and would have a file attached
named “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs”.
At the time windows often hid file extensions up
to the first period. So it would be only look like a
normal text file. Clicking on it will allow the virus
to start up and infect the system. It will first
overwrite random files with copies of itself. And
then it would send emails of itself to all addresses
in the Microsoft address book, allowing the
process to start again and spread quickly.
HOW DID IT SPREAD?
Similar to how viruses spread today, it would
look like a normal file sent by an acquaintance
and was seen as safe by the receiver. But
clicking on it will allow the virus to take affect
and quickly spreaed itself to others.The virus
was spreading so quickly that in 10 days it was
able to infect over 50 million computers
worldwide. And it forced companies to shut
down their email systems at the time.
AFTERMATH
 In total the damages were reported to cost between
$5.5-8.7 Billion dollars worldwide. And estimated to
cost another $10 – 15 billion dollars to remove the
worm from computers.
After all of this damages De Guzman and Ramones
were caught and arrested. But there were no laws
against writing malware in the Philippines at the time
they were released. After this the Republic act no. 8792
also known as E-Commerce law was enacted.