It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, and what’s more festive than cybersecurity and malware? One of the most infamous email-spread viruses was in the form of a love letter, and more specifically, a LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs.
On May 5th, 2000, an email message began spreading from the Philippines. This email message contained the subject line “ILOVEYOU,” with a message saying “kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me.” The email contained an attachment titled “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs.”
The ILOVEYOU virus is estimated to have caused between $5.5-8.7 billion in damages worldwide, and cost an estimated $15 billion to remove the virus. Within ten days, more than 50 million users reported to be infected, and by the end of the virus’ life, around 10% of the entire world’s internet-connected computers had been infected.
The CIA, Pentagon, British Parliament, and most large corporations had to completely shut down their mail servers to keep the infection from spreading within the organizations. The Smithsonian included ILOVEYOU in their “Top Ten Most Destructive Computer Viruses” in 2012.
So, what could have stopped the ILOVEYOU virus?
The most effective way of keeping email-spread virus from taking over is to be informed. Knowing the signs of an attempted attack or malicious emails or attachments is crucial in this time of increased ransomware attacks. Contact us today and we can help you with employee cybersecurity training!