Let’s take a trip down memory lane to May 2000. Just another day at the office: You turn on your work computer, connect to the internet and download the latest e-mail in the Microsoft Outlook client. You immediately notice a strange message with the subject line “ILOVEYOU.” A person you know confesses their love to you. Maybe a school friend… Wait, no! Even better — your older supervisor.
I (Don’t) Love You
Back on May 5, 2000, the day the ILoveYou virus hit hard, such large, worldwide Internet attacks based on malicious emails were uncharted territory. For those who weren't in the workforce two decades ago, the ILoveYou virus infected some 50 million systems worldwide – often rendering them unusable – and cost more than $15 billion to repair. It was actually a worm, a malicious program that duplicates itself from one directory, drive computer, or network to another. Most worms spread through email and may have mass-mail functions (such as ILoveYou) that self-propagate via each address in a victim machine's mailbox.
The Culprit
Four days after the virus began spreading, Philippines police searched an apartment in Manila and seized computer magazines, telephones, disks, wires and cassette tapes. They also arrested one of the occupants, Reomel Ramones. Ramones, a curly-haired 27-year-old who worked at a local bank, seemed like an unlikely computer hacker, and investigators wondered if they had arrested the wrong guy. Attention turned to the apartment's two other residents: Ramones' girlfriend, Irene de Guzman, and her brother, Onel. Onel de Guzman — who was not in the apartment when it was raided, and could not be found — was a student at AMA Computer College. The college was home to a self-described hacking group, the now-defunct GRAMMERSoft, which specialized in helping other students cheat on their homework. While police could not prove initially that de Guzman was a member, officials at the school shared with them a rejected final thesis he had written, which contained the code for a program bearing a startling resemblance to ILOVEYOU.
Legal loophole
After several days out of the public eye, de Guzman appeared at the press conference in Quezon, flanked by his lawyer and sister. Asked whether he might have been responsible for the virus, he responded through his lawyer: "It is possible." "He did not even know that the actions on his part would really come to the results which have been reported," his lawyer said. To a ripple of laughter from reporters, the lawyer added, after a mumbled consultation with de Guzman: "The internet is supposed to be educational so it should be free." Asked what he felt about the damage caused by the virus, de Guzman said "nothing, nothing."
For others in the country, de Guzman was a hero. "Here is a Filipino genius who has put the Philippines on the world map," wrote one newspaper columnist. "[He] has proven that the Filipino has the creativity and ingenuity to turn, for better or for worse, the world upside down."
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