Transfer of Computer Viruses
Email is great in a lot of ways. All sort of of electronic data can be transmitted in moments using email technology. Unfortunately, this ease-of-use can bring unwanted files, too. Many viruses have been transmitted through email. Some messages claim to be a joke or other sort of program that someone would want to open, but are actually bad viruses. Viruses which inject themselves into files can be transmitted unknowingly in various types of documents.
Luckily, modern virus scanners scan incoming messages. Today, network worms make up a larger portion of the malicious data transfer.
ILOVEYOU - A famous email virus
The ILOVEYOU worm/virus was a famous email-transmitted piece of malicious code, which began its rampage on May 3, 2000. It is credited as the most costly worm ever.
How it works.
ILOVEYOU works in a simple way. User opened up what they thought would be a "love letter," which was actually a Microsoft Visualbasic Script (because of this, it did not affect Macs). Then the virus would delete all files with the extension .JPG, .JPEG, .VBS, .VBE, .JS, .JSE, .CSS, .WSH, .SCT, or .HTA, replacing them with a copy of itself. .MP3 and .MP2 audio files were not deleted, but made hidden and had a copy of ILOVEYOU put in their place. ILOVEYOU would also add some information to the registry, allowing it to run automatically whenever the computer was rebooted. Some variations of the worm would even download a password stealing program. Finally, the virus would send itself to all of the user's contacts, tricking the recipient into thinking that the email was from a trusted co-worker and bringing many mailservers down to their knees.
Removal
The ILOVEYOU virus is fairly easy to remove. Simply:
- Delete all infected email messages
- Remove the registry key
- Reboot
- Change all the MP3's back to visible
- and hope you have a backup to replace the virus with your original deleted files