Anna Kournikova virus definition
Anna Kournikova virus was a cyber threat that began to spread worldwide in February 2001. The virus came via email, and the “gate” to the virus was a picture of former Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova. However, now it’s an old virus, and most modern antivirus software programs can easily detect it.
How the virus worked
Users all over the internet were getting emails with the subject line “Here you have, ;0)”, followed by a message “Hi: Check This!” and an attached file named “AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs”. The email recipient would open the file hoping to find photos of the famous tennis player, but instead, they ended up with a malicious program. The worm would infect the computer and send a copy of itself to all the contacts in the user’s address book. The Anna Kournikova worm was not very sophisticated and did not destroy data on the infected computer. Instead, it relied on social engineering and tricking people, so it could clog up email systems and cause inconvenience.
The creator
A 20-year-old Dutch programmer, Jan de Wit, created the Anna Kournikova worm. He made the virus in just a few hours with a simple and free Visual Basic Worm Generator program designed by an Argentinian programmer. The young hacker turned himself in after realizing how much the virus had spread. He was sentenced to150 hours of community service.
