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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Love moves in mysterious ways
By Yasmine El-RashidiNobody guessed that love would be so unkind that day; a seemingly ordinary Thursday in spring. But as the self-propagating computer love bug ripped across the globe, it brought those three little words to terrible shame.
"I LOVE YOU," read the e-mail's subject line. "Kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me." The attachment name: LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs.
It would have been hard to resist -- and it was. Millions of computer users around the world fell victim to the virus -- which spread like fire and affected systems from the White House, Pentagon and Congress to the British Parliament. The menacing rate at which it moved, however, may have been a virtue for some, for as it neared Egypt and the Middle East, endless warnings had already been circulated left and right.
While there are no figures for the number of infected users in the country, officials at the government's Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC), told Al-Ahram Weekly that cases of infection among the country's estimated 200,000 Internet users were restricted to a limited number of individual users.
"Because the effect was so great in Asia and the rest of the world, the response was extremely quick," Midhat Youssef, technical team leader at IDSC, told the Weekly. "Asian authorities issued warnings immediately, and by the time the virus reached Egypt, there were many warnings already in circulation."
Indeed, IBM put out a bold alert, the British Council shut down its server, Internet Service Providers put their services on hold and corporations such as Citibank brought their Internet activities to a halt.
"Our mail access was shut off on Thursday," Noha Rizk, assistant product manager, auto loans, at Citibank Global Consumer Bank, told the Weekly. "As soon as the virus alert was released, our London office shut off the mail server. It only came back up again today [Monday]."
The glitch, though, arose from the mastermind social engineering of the alleged hacker -- a 23-year-old male from the Pandacan area of Manila who was reportedly taken into the custody of the Philippine authorities on Monday.
"The e-mail looks like it's coming from someone you know," Youssef said. "You'd never think a friend would send you a virus. Also, there are many variants to the virus."
Once a user clicks on the attachment, the virus is activated, copying itself to two critical system directories and adding triggers in the windows registry. This ensures that every time the computer reboots, ILOVEYOU is running. The bug then overwrites certain graphics and music files and spreads itself by automatically sending copies to everyone listed in the computer's Microsoft Outlook e-mail address book. What makes it so much more potent than last year's Melissa virus -- which travelled in a similar manner -- is that the love bug can spread itself to hundreds or thousands of addresses, whereas Melissa could only spread itself to 50. In addition, Melissa did not spread through chat rooms such as the popular Internet Relay Chat programme mIRC.
The consequence of the twisted brilliance behind this worldwide menace was that it reached an estimated 10 million Internet users in just a couple of days.
"I got it from a friend I hadn't heard from in a while," said Dina Khashaab, architect. "I was curious to hear what she had to say so I opened it. The next e-mail in my 'inbox' was the warning!"
The result was 603 corrupted files, many lost documents, and much too much heartache.
"The problem," Dina explains, "is that you can prevent your computer from getting the virus if you download the software, but when you come to clean up already infected files, a lot of them have to be erased."
The solution is websites such as McAfee.com, Symantec.com, and F-Secure.com -- all of which allow users to download anti-virus software for a free trial period.
It may be too little too late, though, for those infected users around the world. A research company tracking the global effects of ILOVEYOU announced it expects damage to reach at least $10 billion before the virus and its variants are eradicated.
The first variant, "Mother's Day," was said to be even more vicious than the original. Spreading with the subject line "Mother's Day Order Confirmation," users were asked to 'check' the attached invoice: "We have proceeded to charge your credit card for the amount of $326.92 for the Mother's Day diamond special. We have attached a detailed invoice to this e-mail. Please print out the attachment and keep it in a safe place. Thanks again and have a happy Mother's Day!"
Again, an e-mail hard to ignore. And this one, harder to get rid of since it targets critical .INI and .BAT files which are in a computer's hard drive throughout. Without those files, most basic computer settings and simple scripts are gone, crippling computers from running at all.
The list goes on, including viruses circulating under subject lines such as "Joke," "virus ALERT!!!," and "Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui" ['let's meet tonight for coffee,' in Lithuanian]. The catch is that all the attachments end in '.vbs'.
The future of the alleged virus writer, if convicted, is unclear. Philippine authorities are working closely with the FBI and the International Police (InterPol) on the case, but announced they have no laws specifically pertaining to such an act.
One thing, though, is unfortunately clear; it is going to be hard, for a while, to expect a loved one to respond to "I love you" with a smile.
