Filipino Creator of “I Love You” Virus Was Tracked Down in Quiapo, Manila
The Filipino creator of the destructive computer virus the “I Love You” virus was tracked down in a repair shop in Quiapo, Manila.
The “I Love You” virus or sometimes known as “Love Bug” was created by a Filipino student who was once failed in his thesis. The virus has spread worldwide and infected computers from local to confidential organizations.
The virus’s worldwide financial damage range from $5 to $8 billion. Up to 10 percent of all worldwide computers connected to the internet was thought to have been infected.
Even The Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the British Parliament and many large corporations completely shut down their mail systems in order to protect themselves from the virus.
The creator of the destructive virus was Onel De Guzman, a Filipino computer science student at the AMA Computer College in Pandacan, Manila in 2000. However, he admitted that he never meant for the virus to spread globally.
This was his revelation after a BBC writer Geoff White personally tracked him down in the Philippines. White interviewed De Guzman for a forthcoming book on cybercrime called Crime Dot Com.
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White flew to the Philippines in April 2019 and started looking for De Guzman in several mobile phone repair shops in Quiapo, Manila. This, after he received information that the legendary hacker was there.
According to White, De Guzman have created the “I Love You” virus when he was still in college. The virus was a modified version of an earlier virus that he coded to steal internet access passwords, which is necessary for the age of internet dial-up.
De Guzman said he later improved the code to add an auto-spread feature. He also had the idea of naming it “I Love You,” which he said has an appeal around the world.
“I figured out that many people want a boyfriend, they want each other, they want to love, so I called it that,” White quoted De Guzman as saying.
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.
“The virus contained malicious code that would overwrite files, steal passwords, and automatically send copies of itself to all contacts in the victim’s Microsoft Outlook address book,” White says in the BBC report.
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. 8792, or the E-Commerce Act in July 2000. De Guzman is now 44 and said he regrets creating the virus and does not like the trouble brought to him.
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