Virus ILOVEYOU spreads through e-mail clients. It uses the address book of your Outlook to get communicated to other PCs. It has the power to overwrite important Windows and other files which can cause serious trouble for your PC. It can damage Windows registry to kneel down your computer.

ILOVEYOU virus was noted for the first time on May 4, 2000, when within a short period of five hours it clogged web servers of the entire Asia, Europe, and the United States. The consequence was so severe that the entire e-mail systems of corporate remained shut down for several hours.

The program was written on visual basic code. The e-mail attachment was subjected as “ILOVEYOU” or “ FWD: JOKE”. The message was quite attractive with opening line as “kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me,”.

As soon as the attachment was clicked the malware get executed. This virus worked very smartly, it first scanned the PC’s memory to know the password of your Outlook and then sent the information to its creator (remote website developer). The creator in turn opened the user’s e-mail clients and made use of the address book to get communicated to the entire address book.

When the e-mail attachment is opened, the virus creates MSKernel32.vbs, LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.VBS files in windows system folder and Win32Dll.VBS in Windows folder. Next, it changes the Windows registry settings, so that the script gets associated with Windows restart.

The key role of this virus is to corrupt the files ending with vbs, .vbe, .js, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg, .jpeg, .mp2, .mp3 by overwriting them. It can also change the home page of your web browser, especially of Internet Explorer.