ILOVEYOU

If you've been in IT for more than 16 years, you may remember a little worm called "ILOVEYOU." Today marks the 16th anniversary of that infamous event.

I vividly recall racing from office to office, urgently unplugging machines from the network ports. As colleagues shouted, "What the hell?!" I quickly shifted my focus to the server room and disconnected the core switch.

This worm was particularly nasty—one of the worst impacts before Stuxnet. In fact, "ILOVEYOU" was credited with a staggering $5.5 billion in losses. For those curious about this historical event, you can watch a video of someone replicating the attack here on YouTube.

The worm operated by mailing itself to everyone in your contact list with the subject line "ILOVEYOU." Once recipients opened the email, it replicated itself at an alarming rate. Mail servers became overwhelmed, and inboxes around the world were flooded with these messages. It was quickly modified to target certain file types and overwrite data, further spreading its reach.

IT departments were inundated, struggling to clean up and protect against the tidal wave of malware flooding desktops, servers, and email systems. In many cases, companies had to take their networks offline until countermeasures were implemented.

What We Learned

The silver lining to this story is that it was one of the early events that demonstrated to businesses just how serious cybersecurity could be. Humans often excel at ignoring risks that we can't see, touch, or visualize. Events like this shock us out of our complacency and force us to confront the real-world implications of our assumptions and standards.

Happy May the 4th!

Today also marks a significant day in geek history—May the 4th, celebrated as "May the 4th be with you." It’s an annual occasion to honor our love for the Star Wars universe.