vbs and was therefore a Visual Basic Script in disguise. Then, as today, Windows suppressed file extensions by default, so few users would have seen that the innocent-looking TXT file in fact ended in. Body text: kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me.Whether that was simply a typo or a Freudian slip we shall probably never know:Īs shown above, the code used Visual Basic automation to get the Outlook program to do the email sending, retrieving every entry in your address book, both individuals and groups, and spamming out emails that looked like this: Intriguingly, the author mis-spelled the variable names mail and mailad (short for mail address) in the code as male and malead. The Love Bug virus was also known ILOVEYOU because it spewed itself out in emails with those three words, jammed together as one, in the subject line. (We doubt this version is one you want to sing along to the Beatles’ tune, but if you aren’t familiar with the 1960s original, you can check out the album cover and listen to it online.) The trick we've known for all these years, That makes the Love Bug computer virus 20 years old today, depending on your timezone and how early in the infection chain you were.
Five years ago to the day, we wrote up our reminiscence of an infamous and globally troublesome computer pandemic from the turn of the century.
