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Kournikova Virus Hits the United States

New virus uses Outlook Express to replicate, clog mail servers.

Douglas F. Gray, IDG News Service

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Anna Kournikova is here, brandishing more than just a wicked backhand.

A new Visual Basic script virus named for Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova began clogging up e-mail systems across the country early Monday, according to antivirus vendor Symantec.

The virus, which spreads itself through e-mail systems using Microsoft Outlook in a way similar to the notorious "Love Letter" virus, apparently made its way from Europe to the United States overnight, according to Vincent Weafer, director of antivirus research for Symantec.

The virus, which does not appear to cause any other damage than sending itself, features one of three variants of the subject line "Here you go :-)" as well as three variants of the name for the attachment, based around "Anna.Kournikova.jpg.vbs." The image is intended to appear to be a .jpg image of tennis favorite Kournikova.

"We started getting reports from U.S. customers overnight," Weafer says. "At this point we believe it came from Europe, but we haven't been able to narrow it down any further yet," he adds.

Virus Is Easy to Find

Because there are only three variants on the subject line and the name of the attachment, Weafer believes the virus will be easy to filter out, but he does not believe that it is a variant of any previously discovered virus.

Finland-based security vendor F-Secure calls the virus "Onthefly." The company says that it appears to be spreading faster than many of last year's bigger viruses, adding that it is currently spreading as fast as "Love Letter," which infected an estimated 15 million computers.

According to Symantec's Weafer, the virus has hit "about 50" of Symantec's large customers so far.

"Most likely, this came from the virus generation kit, which allows 'script kiddies' to create viruses easily," he says. Script kiddies are computer users who usually lack programming skills but use easy-to-assemble kits and scripts to create viruses.

(For more information about viruses, see PCWorld.com's "Viruses 2000: A Special Report.")

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