Security companies are warning against a new strain of last year’s
Love Bug virus that tempts recipients of e-mail messages with an
attached picture of tennis star Anna Kournikova. Opening the
picture launches a program that spreads the virus attachment to
everyone on the individual’s Microsoft Outlook address book, a type
of virus known as an internet worm.
According to anti-virus specialists McAfee AVERT, a division of
Network Associates, the virus will likely appear in an e-mail with
the subject “Here you have, ;o)” and the body of the e-mail will
say “Hi: Check This!” The Visual Basic Script attachment is a file
called “AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs”. Recipients should immediately
delete the e-mail without opening the attachment.
Network Associates said the worm has already infected numerous
large companies and threatens to bring office systems to a
standstill by generating an enormous volume of e-mail, although the
virus is not thought to harm files on computers.
The spread of the virus, which is thought to have originated in
Europe, was today said to be comparatively slow due to protections
introduced in many systems following the devastation cause by the
Love Bug virus which was launched in May 2000.
