Valentine's Day 2001 hysteria

CATEGORY: Overblown computer security threats

A small wave of Valentine's Day 2001 hysteria stems largely from (1) speculation of a looming Internet disaster and (2) an overblown virus alert.

It appears antivirus vendor Sybari planted the first seeds of hysteria about a Valentine's Day virus problem, thanks to a press release issued on 1 February. Email security firm MessageLabs planted their own seeds of hysteria on 5 February with a press release titled " 'Love Bug' virus looms on eve of St. Valentine," in which they announced the findings of an intriguing survey:

Despite the publicity [last year of the ILoveYou virus], more than a third (37%) of business email users across the UK will still open such an email if it arrives again this week, on February 14th, according to a report by IDC/Messagelabs... Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, said of the survey findings: “We’ve seen the numbers of viruses detected in emails rise sharply over the last year. The report goes to prove that on a day such as St Valentines’ Day email users are vulnerable to unusual email, which creates an opportunity for virus writers. As Human beings we are naturally inquisitive and that makes us susceptible to a whole host of socially engineered viruses. St Valentine’s day makes it easier for virus writers to achieve damage on a wider scale”
The report confirms that on any day of the year users would open an email appearing to be from someone they know if the following appeared in the subject line: Great Joke (54%), Look at this (50%), Message (46%), No title (40%) or special offer (39%). Sunner continues: “71% of the surveyed believe email is now a business critical tool and more than half of them (57%) are now sending non business related email from work. Adding to that, of the 65% of respondents who had AV software and who were personally responsible for updating it nearly half of them (44%) left it longer than a month to do so”...
Interpreting the survey results, Alistair Kelman, an Internet security expert at the London School of Economics said: “11% of the people surveyed had received the ‘Love Bug’ last year, that on its own is an astonishing number from the sample. But despite all the press attention over the last year it would appear that three times that amount would open it this year. The results are very worrying at a time when the threat of computer viruses are rising.”

Elron Software issued a press release warning about the dangers of Valentine's Day, and they mentioned the ILoveYou virus in passing. Antivirus vendor Sophos followed a day later with an advisory "warn[ing] companies to be aware of the dangers of electronic Valentine cards. Employees are expected to email thousands of these cards this Valentine's Day which could be harbouring dangerous computer viruses." Computer Associates followed on 9 February with their own press release.

Stories about a Valentine's Day armageddon soon appeared on newswires such as Reuters, ZDNN, MSNBC, and Newsbytes.

Antivirus vendor McAfee.com coincidentally added their own seeds of hysteria with the announcement of a "world virus map." Their website now displays a near-real-time graphic of infections detected around the world. Their current default map view shows much of the North American continent in 'red alert status' — thereby implying a global virus attack in progress. (Vmyths.com prefers this map view because you'll notice a global virus attack when it strikes.)

Last updated: 2001/2/12