The most costly virus in history is the Love Bug infection, which was launched in 2000. This infection caused an estimated $5.5 billion in damage worldwide, making it the most expensive infection ever. The Love Bug virus was a mass-mailing worm that contaminated over 45 million computers in just a few days. The infection spread rapidly by emailing itself to everyone in the victim's address book. When a computer was contaminated, the infection would erase crucial files and spread itself to other computer systems. The Love Bug infection was eventually dropped in a group of anti-virus scientists who developed a vaccine that might safeguard computer systems from the infection. look these up