The year was 2002 when this week’s Tech Time Warp was born. Email and the internet were still enough of a novelty that unwitting computer users were duped by an email worm promising fun screensavers. In multiple variants claiming to offer increasingly odd images, the MyLife worm tricked users into downloading malware that (mostly) executed a file-destroying payload when particular conditions were met.
A worm built on simple social engineering
The first version of MyLife, in early March 2002, featured a rather innocent-looking image of a girl holding a flower. While the initial MyLife, when executed, did email copies of itself to everyone in the user’s Microsoft Outlook address book and MSN Messenger contact list, its code also contained a bug that prevented any file deletion. The worm’s name came from its carrier email subject line: “my life ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
MyLife.b fixed the bug, however, and brought the promised caricature of former President Bill Clinton playing a saxophone with a bra hanging out. Along with that, it also deleted files when an infected machine was rebooted in an hour divisible by eight.
By Easter weekend in April, MyLife was on a role, with four new variants released. MyLife.c released its payload if the worm had been run on the system at least once already. The system’s time variable had to be at least 50, too. The worm would attempt to delete all C: drive files and reformat drives D–I. Later variants offered caricatures of Israeli leader Ariel Sharon and celebrities including Julia Roberts and Shakira.
Interesting, the email carried a message stating it had been scanned by antivirus software and carried no “viruse” [sic]. On YouTube, you can watch a video from danooct1 showing the failure of the initial MyLife to execute its payload.
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Photo: wk1003mike / Shutterstock
