“t’s now clear that the original ILOVEYOU worm,
apparently created by a 23- year-old Filipino and e-mailed out at
around 03:00 GMT Thursday, is the worst virus outbreak on
record. Latest reports from Symantec (http://www.symantec.com
) confirm that 10 variants, other than the original, are now in
active circulation, masquerading as jokes, Mother’s day gift
orders, for example.”
“Almost all the variants, the IT security firm says, have been
designed to bypass anti-virus and similar protection software that
has been updated to handle the original “killa from Manila” worm.
… arlier indications that the worm was designed to wipe
multimedia files, transmit IDs and passwords to the super.net
e-mail addresses – and cause havoc on top of the wholesale downing
of Internet e-mail services – have now been confirmed.”
“The sheer scale of the damage and the speed with which it
zipped around the world was caused, the firm said, by the simple
fact that it replicates to all addresses in the host users’ Outlook
directory. In contrast, Melissa, which wrought havoc in March of
last year, “only” sent itself to the first 50 users in a
recipient’s directory.”