Memories of the Love Bug worm

Do you remember when the Love Bug worm spread around the world?

I remember pretty clearly Thursday, May 4th 2000.

I was in Stockholm, in a fairly swanky hotel, giving a talk to about a hundred system adminstrators. Before the coffee break I told them all the amusing story of a virus called NoSmoking that was programmed to intermittently send messages from one Novell NetWare user to another.

I told the delegates that if you were on the receiving end of NoSmoking’s payload you would receive a pop-up on their screen saying “No smoking, please !” or – with perhaps awkward implications in the office as the messages were indistinguishable from one intentionally sent by a colleague – “Friday I’m in LOVE !”.

But something strange then happened during that morning’s coffee break. The pagers and mobile phones carried by the talk’s guests began to beep, and several of them approached me asking for more information about the NoSmoking worm.

“This NoSmoking virus – did you say it only sends…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter, Mastodon, or Threads to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

What do you think? Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.