Who created the love virus

In the UK, Parliament shut down its email network for several hours to protect itself, and even the Pentagon was reportedly affected. The previous year, the Melissa bug is believed to have infected a million machines using similar tactics. However, Love Bug dwarfed previous outbreaks and exposed how vulnerable the world's increasing internet connectivity was to attack.

Investigators traced the virus to an email address registered to an apartment in Manila, capital of the Philippines. He was a member of an underground hacking group called Grammersoft and quickly became the lead suspect in a police investigation.

De Guzman's lawyer organised a press conference on 11 May, at which de Guzman appeared to speak little English. When asked whether he may have released the virus accidentally, de Guzman said: "It is possible. At the time, the Philippines had no law covering computer hacking, and neither de Guzman nor anyone else was ever prosecuted.

Suspicion also fell on de Guzman's fellow student Michael Buen, who has been cited online as the co-author of the Love Bug. I set out to track down Onel de Guzman and resolve the year mystery of Love Bug's origin. Some claimed he had been recruited by Microsoft following the outbreak. All proved to be wide of the mark. On a forum dedicated to the Philippine underworld, a user claimed in that de Guzman ran a mobile phone repair shop in the Quiapo district of Manila.

In April , I visited the area hoping to encounter the suspect, only to find a sprawling market containing dozens of mobile phone repair shops. I wrote Onel de Guzman's name on a piece of paper and showed it to shop workers at random in the hope that someone would recognise it.

Previous Email Worms. Next Crypto Virus. Recommended Articles. Article Contributed By :. Easy Normal Medium Hard Expert. Writing code in comment? Please use ide. Load Comments. What's New. Most popular in Computer Networks. More related articles in Computer Networks. De Guzman said he later improved the code to add an auto-spread feature. De Guzman revealed that he initially sent the virus email to his friend in Singapore. After that, the virus started to spread there, and eventually, it goes globally.

De Guzman was arrested by authorities, however, he was later released and all charges against him were dropped, primarily because there were no laws against spreading virus at that time. Two months later, Congress enacted Republic Act No.