

Only a few users at each site had to access the attachment to generate millions more messages that crippled mail systems and overwrote millions of files on computers in each successive network. Because the worm used mailing lists as its source of targets, the messages often appeared to come from acquaintances and were therefore often regarded as "safe" by their victims, providing further incentive to open them. Messages generated in the Philippines began to spread westwards through corporate email systems. Systemic weaknesses in the design of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows were exploited that allowed malicious code capable of complete access to the operating system, secondary storage, and system and user data simply by unwitting users clicking on an icon. The worm used social engineering to entice users to open the attachment (out of actual desire to connect or simple curiosity) to ensure continued propagation. True text files are considered to be innocuous, as they are incapable of running executable code. The attachment, which had two periods, could thus display the inner fake "txt" file extension. Windows would parse file names from right to left, stopping at the first period character, showing only those elements to the left of this.

vbs files) being enabled, and took advantage of a feature in Windows that hid file extensions by default, which malware authors would use as an exploit. On the machine system level, ILOVEYOU relied on the scripting engine system setting (which runs scripting language files such as. I love you virus file (Note: free to use it will shutdown his/her computer but if it harms his/her system am not responsible)
