I LOVE YOU... a very sweet word with a very meaningful meaning to the opposite sex, but when it comes to the cyber history, it's a whole different story...
I LOVE YOU virus also known as Love Letter is a computer worm, it is a computer worm that successfully attacked tens of millions of computers in the year 2000, when it was sent as an attachment to a user's emails with the text "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. It is originated in 1999 from a thesis that had been rejected, developed by Onel de Guzman, a student of AMA college in the Philippines. it's suppose to be a computer project program that will hack into computer systems and extract vital information, particularly Internet Service accounts like e-mail addresses and internet services, but unfortunately, His thesis is rejected by the College of Computer Studies academic board. After AMA's graduation on May 3, 2000 (Philippine time) an email arrived to millions of people throughout the world and caused a flood of e-mails that hit at least 45 million users in at least 20 countries, according to one estimate.upon opening the attachment, it immediately infects your computer. The infection first scan your PC's memories for passwords which are sent back to the virus' creator. Finally, the infection corrupts files ending with the formats of .vbs, .vbe, .js, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg, .jpeg, .mp2, .mp3 by overwriting with a copy of itself. With the simple subject of "ILOVEYOU" and an attachment "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.". The final extension was hidden by default, leading unsuspecting users to think it was a normal text file. Upon opening the attachment, the worm sent a copy of itself to everyone in the Windows Address Book and with the user's sender address. It also made a number of malicious changes to the user's system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU
According to Guinness World Records, The I LOVE YOU virus was the most widespread computer virus of all time. The virus was traced to an apartment in Manila which Onel de Guzman was the tenant in that certain apartment, De Guzman was invited by the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation(NBI) for questioning. de Guzman admitted spreading the virus by "an accident". In reaction of what happened, AMA expelled de Guzman for what he had done, and considered him as a drop out for his entire life.The NBI charged De Guzman for violation of Republic Act 8484 or the Access Devices Regulation Act on 1998. But due to lack of sufficiency the Philippine Department of Justice dropped the charges as there was no clear laws regulating the World Wide Web. Due to this incident, June 14, 2000, Republic Act 8792 known as Philippine Electronic Commerce Act of 2000 was signed.
On what I've seen to this virus and his maker, the virus is a hassle when it comes you will get infected to it and the maker is a genius. Yes, its not ethical to create a virus just to flood some tens of millions computers all over the world, but you have to give it to the hacker who made the virus, he has a very brilliant mind. If I were to ask, the Philippines should be proud of him for having done such things, it's just a simple statement that not only Americans and Japanese can be a brilliant hackers. A Filipino can do it too., and though Onel de Guzman committed a cyber crime. He is still my hero, for he showed that not only some Americans and Japanese can do some hacking, a Filipino can also do what they can do also.
And as for the virus, if only he can reprogram it to make the firewall of the Philippines stronger and not that easy to be intrude by other countries.
Just to wrap all things up, the lesson to be learned here is not to accept unknown email from an unknown persons, it may contain some harmful viruses that your anti virus can't handle. And also... two thumbs up for the maker of the ILOVEYOU virus.
