Michael Buen

IRL Name: 
Michael Buen
Biography: 

Michael Buen is a Filipino programmer who was with Onel de Guzman at AMA and were friends. He was the suspected author of the I Love You Virus which made a history in the field of computer viruses because it swept through banks, securities firms, web hosting companies. The virus forced The Pentagon, CIA, the British Parliament, and most large corporations to completely shut down their mail systems.

Last February 2000 (Before the outbreak of the virus), a virus was sent to clients of Sophos, a security firm based in Oxfordshire, England. It came in the form of a CV in the name of Michael Buen and it came from the Philippines. The virus was designed to reproduce itself and infect Word documents. It would spread by e-mail - if someone received an infected document and opened it, their files would become infected. The CV tricked people into thinking the sender was looking for a job - but it contained a threat:

"Warning! If I don't get a stable job by the end of the month, I will release a third virus that will remove all folders in the primary hard disc," it said.

In the company of his lawyer, Michael Buen declined to give details. He denied he was capable of writing the Love Bug virus.

Facts

The ILOVEYOU script (the attachment) was written in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting (VBS) which ran in Microsoft Outlook and was enabled by default. The script added Windows Registry data for automatic startup on system boot.

Rumors

Both Michael and Onel were after a hottie named Madame Bautista, and their rivalry threatened to ruin their friendship.

Michael Buen got jealous of Onel and Bautista so he broke into her Hotmail account, configured Onel's own trojan to work against him, wrote the enclosing script, and sent the message - with the sender being Madame Bautista at Hotmail - to Onel with the subject line 'I LOVE YOU'. Onel mistakenly opens the email which then unleashed the virus.

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