Moscow-born Kournikova, 19, is the world's ninth-ranked female tennis player and has never won a WTA title. Her off-the-court profile, however, has captured the imaginations of many, stroked by a provocative photo spread in the June 5 issue of Sports Illustrated and her rocky romantic links to hockey player Sergei Fedorov, of the Detroit Red Wings.

Love Bug redux
The Kournikova virus - which also is being referred to as "VBS", "SST" or "On The Fly" - was first discovered in August and has been found in more than 50 large corporations, including Fortune 500s, Network Associates Inc `NETA.O' said in a statement. "This is the biggest thing since the Love Letter," Mr David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro Inc `TMIC.O', said. Perry said users of his company's antivirus software have reported 50 to 100 Kournikova hits per hour, but he and other security experts do not yet know how many computers have been affected. The subject line on the Kournikova virus e-mail reads: "Here you have, ;o)". The body of the e-mail says "Hi: Check this!" When users of Microsoft Corp's MSFT.O Outlook e-mail software open the attachment, which is disguised as a photo file, the virus infects their computers and sends itself to every name in the users' address book. "It's not dangerous in a sense that it's data destructive," said Vincent Weafer, director of the SymantecAntivirus Research Center. The Kournikova virus and others like it are damaging because they have the potential to clog e-mail systems and to cause servers to crash. "They spread and burn very quickly, but die very quickly," Weafer said. One San Francisco analyst, who got a half-dozen of the Kournikova e-mail before his firm's server went down, wanted to know if people opened the e-mail attachment without a promise of a nude photo. When he learned that was the case, he laughed and said, "Idiots."

Dutch connection
Antivirus experts said it appeared the virus had been built from a programming tool kit created by a hacker known as "Kalimar". If the virus is not completely flushed from a computer, it will automatically connect to the Web site of a Dutch company called Dynabyte on Januray 26 each year, they said. Virus watchers at Trend Micro believe that Kournikova was written by a hacker in Holland who used the handle "On The Fly". Others disagreed about the geographic origins of the virus, saying that the link to the Dutch company was likely a way to throw law enforcement off the hacker's scent.

Reuters