Security threats Toolkit

Anna Kournikova virus targets UK firms

Will Knight ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 12 Feb 2001 18:05 GMT

Antivirus vendors in Europe report receiving numerous alerts at UK companies about a virus disguised as a picture file showing tennis player Anna Kournikova.

The virus comes in an email with the subject "Here you have :o)". Although this appears to contain a JPEG file named Anna Kournikova, this is in fact a virus written in the Visual Basic scripting language.

Graham Cluley, chief technologist with UK antivirus firm Sophos, says he has received "several" reports of the virus from afflicted companies. F-Secure says that it has received "dozens" of reports so far.

Full story to follow.

Running and updating anti-virus software is a complete pain, which is why most users don't bother. Guy Kewney says we know that anybody with a brick heavy enough to break our windows could get into our houses; and that it would cost a fortune to make the house significantly more secure. So we take refuge in statistics -- it's not likely to happen, really; so we'll hope it doesn't. Go to AnchorDesk UK for the news comment.

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