When 'love' goes bad

* The Department of Health and Human Services received more than 3 million

"love bug" e-mail messages, disrupting e-mail service in offices from a

few hours to as many as 6 days.

* As of May 10, the Veterans Health Administration had received 7 million

"ILOVEYOU" messages, compared with a total of 750,000 received during the

Melissa virus episode. The VHA required about 240 man-hours to recover from

the virus.

* Some of the Treasury Department's components required manual distribution

of updated virus signature files because automated means for rollout of

software updates were not in place.

* The Agriculture Department could not obtain the updated antivirus

product it needed until after 1 p.m., in part because it had to compete

with all of the vendor's other customers worldwide to obtain the updates.

Source: General Accounting Office