Few won’t remember the chaos caused by the Love Bug in May last
year. The Love Bug sent a message to recipients entitled ‘I Love
You.’ On opening the e-mail, it sent new messages to everyone in
the user’s address book bringing e-mail servers down world wide.
However, it appears from research conducted by IDC that if a
Love Bug style virus were to occur on Valentine’s Day next week the
chaos could recur. The research found that 37% of users across the
UK would still open an e-mail headed ‘I love you’ on Valentine’s
Day if it appears to come from a recognised source. 11% of those
surveyed had received the virus last year.
In light of the billions of dollars worth of damage caused to
businesses world wide by the Love Bug virus last year, mainly in
lost productivity, many businesses will have taken steps to try to
prevent such damage occurring again and will be on the look out for
new viruses. However, it is important that the users are also alert
to the dangers. As Rob Hailstone, an analyst at the IDC said:
“Despite all the publicity the Love Bug
virus created last year, we discovered that users are the weakest
link in a corporate defence against malicious code. They can spread
viruses in a matter of seconds.”
There are a number of headings often used by virus writers that
were also covered by the research. The research found that on any
day of the year, users would open an e-mail that appeared to be
from someone they know if they had the following subject headings:
Great joke (54%), Look at this (50%), Re: Message (46%), No Title
(40%) or Special Offer (39%).
