ILOVEYOU overwrote system files and personal files and spread itself over and over and over again. The malware was a worm that was downloaded by clicking on an attachment called ‘’. (We hope!) The virus came in an email with a subject line that said “I love you”.īeing curious types, people clicked into the email with aplomb-regardless of the fact the email wasn’t from anyone they knew. If you got an email today like the one that was sent around in 2000, you’d never open it. In fact, it was such a myth that malware could get away with being completely unsubtle. Well, in 2000 malware was a bit of a myth. Likely, ILOVEYOU inspired many hackers to wield their keyboard as a weapon. By today’s standards it’s a pretty tame virus, but in 2000 it was the most damaging malware event of all time.

It’s been 15 years since ILOVEYOU was let loose on the internet. ILOVEYOU is one of the most well-known and destructive viruses of all time. While ILOVEYOU sounds like a cheerful bon mot you might find printed on the inside of a Valentine’s Day card, it’s actually far, far more sinister than that. In February, the FBI offered a cool $3 million reward for Bogachev.Ĭost of the malware: With 500,000 victims, CryptoLocker made upwards of $30 million in 100 days. In June 2014, Operation Tovar took down Evgeniy Bogachev, the leader of the gang of hackers behind CryptoLocker. Now is a good time to remind you to always back your files up! Although with many of the infected computers, if the victims didn’t pay up they’d lose all their files. With some of the hacking attempts, System Restore or recovery software worked. The hackers then sent a decryption key in return for a sum of money, usually somewhere from a few hundred pounds up to a couple of grand. Released in September 2013, CryptoLocker spread through email attachments and encrypted the user’s files so that they couldn’t access them. You know in heist movies when the bad guy grabs someone and threatens them in return for money? Ransomware works much like that, except your computer is taken hostage by a faceless bad guy. Ransomware is a kind of malware that takes your files hostage. While most people can rattle off names like ‘Trojan’, ‘viruses’, and ‘spyware’, they’re often not too familiar with ransomware. When it comes to malware, ransomware is the new kid on the block.

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