Dutch police arrest Anna Kornikova virus suspect

February 14, 2001

Dutch police have arrested a man suspected of writing the Anna Kornikova computer virus.

Police in the northern province of Friesland are holding a 20-year old who faces possible charges of damaging computers through releasing the worm, offences which carry a jail term of up to four years. The man, who cannot be named under Dutch law, turned himself in to police this morning on advice from his parents, according to a Dutch wire report.

A confession-come-apology for spreading the virus was posted on a hacker site under the name 'OnTheFly', which is the user name of a customer of Excite@Home who was reportedly under investigation by the ISP after posting messages on virus writing newsgroups.

As previously reported, the Anna Kournikova (or VBS/SST) virus comes in an email with the subject line "Here you have, ;o)" and an attachment called AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs. The virus is activated by the user clicking on the attachment, after which it emails itself to everyone in a user's Microsoft Outlook address books, so potentially clogging email servers.

After its release on Monday, the virus spread rapidly and provoked a number firms to shut down their email servers as a precaution. Whilst it caused a great deal of inconvenience and irritation its effects were far less severe than first feared, principally because its payload was not particularly destructive and its mode of propagation not as effective as that otherwise similar Love Bug.