On May 4th, 2000, The ILOVEYOU computer worm attacked millions of computers when it was sent as an attachment to an email message with the text "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. It was the first "socially-engineered" malware. IT folk everywhere complained that it took advantage of weakest link in the security chain: the human sitting behind the keyboard.
PC Mag asks, 'I Love You' Virus Turns Ten: What Have We Learned? and the BBC looks back with A Decade On From The ILOVEYOU Bug, but I wonder: if the same thing happened today, how would we react? We grow up hearing that there's not enough love to go around, we don't deserve love, and we're not good enough. It's the same message that advertising sells us along with its products that are supposed to make everything better.
There is a love interest in this story that mostly goes unreported. It seems that its creator, Onel de Guzman, and fellow student Michel Buen both fancied one of their teachers. Buen, jealous of the relationship between de Guzman and the instructor, broke into her email account. He configured de Guzman's own trojan (a project he was developing) to work against him, added the enclosing script, and sent the message—from Madame Bautista at Hotmail—to de Guzman with the subject line, 'I LOVE YOU.' De Guzman, of course, opened the message. The virus replicated, sent itself to everyone in his address book, and the rest is history.
The act of virus writing might not seem like an art, but their creators call themselves "virus artists." To hear what the source code "sounds" like, check out Franco Berardi's performance. Digitalcraft presented an art exhibition about computer viruses named after ILOVEYOU. Oddly enough, most art that features an I Love You element does so in series (graffiti, Post-it notes, Jacques Perconte's I Love You Campaign). Here's a little ditty from 2005, from the "Virus" section in my first book, Avatar.
I LOVE YOU WANTS TO BE FREE
It is suspected that a 23 year old man living in Manilla created I Love You.
Over a five hour period, during May 4 2000, I Love You spread across North America, Europe and Asia.
One DJ in Texas received I Love You 1500 times, but I Love You will most likely come from someone you know.
I Love You was blamed for shutting down the website of Florida's state lottery.
An alias of I Love You is Very Funny.
The State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department said they had been hit by I Love You, but top security had not been breached.
I Love You affects your machine.
"People think of I Love You as an invasion from Mars," one researcher said, "my aim is to change people's attitudes, to cut down some of the fear."
Don't execute I Love You. You will be fine.
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3 comments:
people want love.
the story of the virus reminds me of what I meant to mention sometime. I have 16 designs of moo cards and one says I love you. When I show the cards, a surprising number of people reach for that one. It's in the top 3 of cards taken. About half reach and take that one, and about half who reach for it, freeze and ask permission.
Interesting, Pearl!
I guess that's why marketing works so well in our culture: buy our gadget and you will be loved. If we all thought we deserved love, we wouldn't fall for it or "freeze and ask permission."
But I think things are changing. People are open enough to reach out for your ILY cards...
i can agree to that
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