LOVEYOUThe ILOVEYOU

ILOVEYOUThe ILOVEYOU virus isconsidered one of the most virulent computer virus ever createdand it’s not hard to see why. The virus managed to wreck havoc on computer systems all over the world, causing damages totaling in at anestimateof $10 billion. 10% of the world’s Internet-connected computers were believed to have been infected. It was so bad that governments and large corporations took theirmailing system offlineto prevent infection.via BBCThe virus was created by twoFilipino programers, Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman. What it did wasuse social engineering to get people to click on the attachment; in this case,a love confession. The attachment was actually a script that poses as a TXT file, due to Windows at the time hiding the actual extension of the file. Once clicked, it will send itself to everyone in the user’s mailing list and proceed to overwrite files with itself, making the computer unbootable. The two werenever charged,as there wereno laws about malware.This led to the enactment of the E-Commerce Lawto address the problem.