Kournikova worm spreads at record-breaking speeds

Tuesday, 13 February 2001, 2:26 pm
Press Release: F-Secure Corporation

MEDIA RELEASE:

Anna Kournikova -themed e-mail worm spreads at record-breaking speeds

ESPOO-Finland, February 13, F-Secure Corporation (HEX:FSC), a leading provider of centrally-managed, widely distributed security solutions is alerting computer users worldwide about a new, rapidly spreading e-mail worm. Known as "Onthefly", this worm sends itself in an Anna Kournikova -themed attachments in e-mails titled as "Here you have,;o)". Ms. Kournikova is known as an international tennis star.

When the attachment is clicked, the virus sends itself via e-mail to all addresses found from Outlook address book. The virus uses encryption to hide itself. The virus was named "Onthefly" because it sets a registry key with this name. It is also known with the name "SST".

"Early propogation reports indicate that this virus is spreading faster than many of the biggest viruses we saw last year", comments Mikko Hypponen. "It's seems to be spreading almost as fast as LoveLetter". LoveLetter is regarded as the biggest ever virus case, with estimated 15 million infected computers.

Because of the big number of e-mails being generated by the virus, it can overload and crash e-mail servers. The virus activates on January 26th, when it opens up the web page of a Dutch computer shop, which apparently has nothing to do with the virus.

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