On May 4, 2000, the ILOVEYOU computer virus was unleashed onto the Internet, leaving behind a trail of millions of screwed computers, a bunch of criminal charges, and countless headaches. It started in 2000 when de Guzman was studying at the AMA Computer University in Manila, learning business strategies and hoping to secure a job abroad in the flourishing world of computer technology. In the Philippines, dial-up internet was paid for for a moment and accessed with a password, but de Guzman was not too bad at all, so de Guzman began working on a code that allowed him to steal Internet access passwords, BBC He explained to White in a news article.
Twenty years later, O’Neill de Guzman, one of the two student programmers who created the bug, was found in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, where he worked at a phone repair booth. Now 44, this is the first time in years that the online anti-hero has spoken to Geoff White, a journalist investigating Crime.com for a new book on cybercrime. The virus worked by sending an email to the suspects with the “eyeview” subject
line and attachment “love letter-for-you-text.vbs”, no doubt expecting to read the love letter, the victim will open the attachment, which will proceed to automatically copy all contacts in the victim’s address book Previously, to overwrite all their files and steal passwords.
Things quickly got out of hand. After being sent to a computer in Singapore, the ILOVEYUS virus jumped from computer to computer and within a few hours spread from Southeast Asia, quickly discovering itself in government and business email systems around the world. The rate of its spread was surprising, saying that a year ago the Internet was 15 times faster than the so-called Melissa computer virus. By the end of the week, it was estimated that millions of computers worldwide had been infected by the ILOVEYOU virus.
De Guzman, however, claimed that his mother had told him that police in Manila were hunting down a hacker and that he did not know about the chaos that had ensued. After the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation and international law enforcement became heated over his move, he briefly went into hiding, and more computers around the world began to collapse.
Finally, De Guzman emerged from obscurity on May 11, 2002, at a press conference in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The 23-year-old made eye contact with the reporters and hid behind some matrix-style sunglasses, often covering his face with a towel. De Guzman’s lawyer, Rolando Quimbo, translated his statement into English on his behalf, saying, The Internet is supposed to be educational and it should be free.
