MyLife, discovered by MessageLabs

MessageLabs

Symantec.cloud, is a major provider of integrated messaging and web security services , with over 19,000 clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 500 located in more than 86 countries and the United Kingdom Parliament...

 in 2002, is a computer worm

Computer worm

A computer worm is a self-replicating malware computer program, which uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other nodes and it may do so without any user intervention. This is due to security shortcomings on the target computer. Unlike a computer virus, it does not need to attach...

 that spreads itself by sending email

Email

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 to the addresses found in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

's contacts list. Written in Visual Basic

Visual Basic

Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...

, it displays an image of a girl holding a flower while it attempts to delete files with certain filename extension

Filename extension

A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage....

s. It is named for a phrase appearing in the subject lines of the emails it sends. A variant, MyLife.B, also called the Bill Clinton worm, instead uses a subject line "bill caricature" and displays a cartoon image of Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 playing a saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

. Many additional variants have been reported.
When the infected file is run, and the picture is closed, the worm runs its payload.
MyLife checks the current date. If the minute value is higher or at 45, the worm searches the C:\ directory and deletes .SYS files, .COM files and the same in D:\ Drives.