The virus was contained within an attachment to an e-mail
message entitled “I love you.” Users' PCs would hang when they
tried to activate the e-mail, during which time the virus was
self-propagating and then sending itself to every address in the
user’s e-mail address book.
The virus appeared to originate in the Philippines. It spread
across Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States.
The virus was directed at mostly graphics files, having a
particularly damaging effect on the media, graphics, web
development and content industry because it corrupts jpeg
files.
Within hours of its discovery, anti-virus software companies had
posted remedy programs on the internet. However, the damage is
already being estimated in the billions of dollars.
In the UK, it is possible that a company could be sued for
negligence where a virus is introduced to its system and spread to
those receiving e-mail attachments from its system. In a case such
as this Love Letter Virus, which appears to have fooled
state-of-the-art virus detection software, a company could still be
considered negligent by a court if it failed to remedy the problem
quickly, when such a remedy became available.
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