Anna Kournikova Virus

What Does Anna Kournikova Virus Mean?

The Anna Kournikova Virus was a worm that spread by email, disguised as an email attachment with the filed name “AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs.” The virus was a Visual Basic script that, once opened, emailed itself to all the contacts within the user’s Outlook address book. Anna Kournikova was a payload-free virus, however, and did not erase any files or send information back to the creator.

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Techopedia Explains Anna Kournikova Virus

The worm was created using a tool kit for creating viruses and released in February 2001 by Dutch programmer Jan De Wit. De Wit turned himself in to the authorities when it became clear how widely his virus had spread. The use of the Russian tennis player’s name was a clever move by De Wit as search queries for images of Kournikova were at one time among the top searched strings on Google.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…