At the Gloucester Citizen, Annelisa Macaulay-Lowe, got a good angle on the love bug virus from a local computer expert. Her story is reproduced below:

It’s way too late for last minute Valentines, but the malicious e-mail “I Love You” virus attacking hard drives and computer files across Gloucestershire has set more than a few hearts hammering.

For Martin Eddolls, general manager of Internet Marketing Management PLC in Cheltenham the nasty bug, which affects only certain files, was a chance for him to prove his skills.

He was the first person to contact the BBC and Sky Television with a solution to de-code the virus which has caused widespread computer chaos across Britain.

Mr Eddolls has to find a speedy remedy for the virus as it had already deleted 3,217 of his files, which luckily had back-up.

Dreamed up by Barok – a ‘hacker handle’ or pseudonym replacing the real name of the hacker to protect his identity – the virus is one of the most complex and malicious yet.

Having originated from Manila in the Philippines, the virus hit India at around 8.45 on Thursday morning and by 10.30am, the virus had reached Britain and was attacking files and hard drives across Gloucestershire.

“It really is a very malicious virus, much worse than the Melissa one a few months ago,”said Mr Eddolls.

“It will hit web designers massively because it attacks all the files we work with – so far 30 per cent of businesses have been hit by it.

The virus works by e-mail and searches all hard drives and connected network drives.One finding a file it writes a copy of itself in the name of the file and then deletes the original.

The files being affected by the virus are, .vbs, .vbe, .js, .jse, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg, .jpeg, .mp3, and .mp2.

It works by e-mailing every e-mail address from your personal contacts file with the virus.”Barok is known for writing some pretty impressive viruses and this one is really complex,” said Mr Eddolls.

“There’s no money in doing something like this – I don’t know why people bother to do it, it must be purely for the five minutes of fame.”

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