A new strain of the ILoveYou virus, named "VBS/LoveLetter.bd," was launched last week specifically to steal passwords from customers of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). Though it is not clear how successful the effort actually was, it was designed to send UBS customers' account information to the writer so that victims' accounts could be accessed and, presumably, emptied. Though bank personnel downplayed the seriousness of the attack, due in part to precautions taken since the first ILoveYou incident, it is interesting to speculate how effective the attempt might have been if the original variant, credited with $billions in damages, had been written to steal this sort of information rather than simply clog mail servers.

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