The so-called Love Bug - an e-mail virus designated I Love You/Love Letter - now seems to have new copycat variations, barely a day after the original virus hit cyberspace running hard enough to wreak havoc around the world, including against several government agencies. But some computer security analysts seem now to believe its reach is worse than its actual destructiveness.
Multiple reports emerged early May 5 that while the original Love Bug's outbreak had begun ebbing, copycats began picking up where it left off. Computer security company F-Serve warned late May 4 that there might be copycat versions around by the next day. The FBI already has an investigation in place.
The Love Bug disabled e-mail systems in Washington on Capitol Hill and in Britain's Parliament, as well as some systems in the U.S. State Department, Colombia's Finance Ministry, and the Argentine newspaper La Nacion. Some reports indicated the Love Bug had brought down about 80 percent of the e-mail systems in Sweden.
The Love Bug spread both by e-mail and by online chat systems and hit tens of millions of computers, cutting a wider swath than even 1999's notorious Melissa. The Love Bug was built to destroy several kinds of files including image and MP3-format music and sound files, among others.
Once an unsuspecting Microsoft Outlook e-mail user opens the e-mail's attachment, the virus not only hits the user's own files but sends itself to everyone in the user's e-mail address book. The virus also hit by driving a user's Web browser to a site later shut down by its Internet service provider. At that site, the Love Bug downloaded a program hunting various password types and sending them to an e-mail account which may be based in the Philippines, according to analysts cited in numerous reports.
Security analysts continue urging users to delete any e-mail with subject attachments called I Love You, Love Letter, or Very Funny. If the attachment is opened, the virus comes out to play.
Some antivirus analysts, however, say the Love Bug's menace may be strictly in its range of reach, rather than its actual destructive capability. Symantec, which produces the popular Norton Antivirus suite, believes Explore.zip, a virus which hit cyberspace last June, was ten times more destructive than the Love Bug.
