Kournikova Virus Continues to Spread

Feb. 13 -- The "Anna Kournikova" virus is picking up speed this morning, spreading to banks, brokerage houses and media organizations across Europe, according to virus experts. And another assault is expected on computers in the United States.

The e-mail-based worm is the biggest worldwide computer virus since last year's Love Bug, says Graham Cluley of the British antivirus firm Sophos. Victims receive an e-mail containing an attachment that seems to be a picture of the winsome Russian tennis player. If they double-click on the attachment, the virus sends itself to everyone in the victim's Microsoft Outlook address book.

"It has been detected within major companies, big ones [this morning], almost every big one, because it's spreading through the PR agencies," said Raemund Genes, vice president for Europe of antivirus firm Trend Micro.

The virus is likely to hit U.S. home users hard today, since most major U.S. companies will have set up protection after Monday's attack, says Cluley. The easiest solution: Don't click on any attachments that claim to be pictures of Kournikova or end with ".vbs," and you won't get infected.

"Home users inevitably are going to be more lackadaisical about updating their software and they're probably going to be keener on looking at pictures of tennis players" than business users, he said.

The virus doesn't destroy files, but it can clog up and shut down mail servers. For e-mail-dependent companies like financial and media firms, that can mean major losses in productivity.

Rampaging Teenagers

The virus was concocted by someone calling himself "OnTheFly," according to Trend Micro. Experts there say OnTheFly is probably a Dutch teenager without much virus experience. He built the virus from a sort of "viruses for dummies" construction kit allowing wanna-be vandals to pick signatures, payloads and damage types from a point-and-click menu.

Construction kits are popular with unskilled kids who want to be seen as tough, Cluley said.

"More and more people are getting into computers, but the people who are getting into computers aren't necessarily as technical as the guys were five or 10 years ago ... [but] a 'cool' virus writer would never touch a construction kit," he said.