Anna Kournikova Virus

                 Modern technology and  gadgets are fast arising nowadays. Gadgets is one of the best that has been invented. Computers and laptops are one of these kinds. These gadgets are very useful nowadays in giving information and also as a communication. But despite of this, these gadgets may be infected by what we called “Virus”. What is a virus by the way? Virus is a computer program that can copy itself and spread from one computer to another without the permission of the owner. It could damage our computers. There are so many kinds of viruses. Every kind of these viruses has its own characteristics. Has its own way to infect other files. One of these kinds is the ANNA KOURNIKOVA Virus.  From the name itself, we never know that it is one of the dangerous viruses arisen.

                Last February 11, 2001, Jan de Wit, a Dutch programmer, authored a virus named Anna Kournikova. It was designed to trick email users into opening a mail message containing a picture of a Russian tennis player, Anna Kournikova. Many would tempt to open this file because Anna Kournikova was famous and a very pretty lady. But actually, it was hiding a malicious program. If the user was able to open the program, the program plunders the address book of the Microsoft Outlook e-mail program and attempts to send itself to all the people listed there. The Kournikova virus tempts and would prompt a message “Hi. Check this!”, and a picture with a file labeled “AnnaKournikova jpg.vbs”.

 

Russian tennis player, Anna Kournikova

This would prompt out to trick you. 

          When launched under Microsoft Windows, the file does not display a picture of Anna Kournikova but it would launch a viral Visual Basic Script that forwards itself to everybody in the Microsoft  Outlook  address book of the victim. It was created by using a simple and widely available Visual Basic Worm Generator program designed by an Argentinian programmer called “[K] Alamar”. The said virus had spread like a wildfire and infected hundreds of thousands of computers world wide. Many businesses had been affected by the time it was released. As a preventive measure said by the anti virus vendors, they should shut down their email system to prevent from being infected by the virus. But by the time the virus was released, Jan de Wit turned himself to police.

               

Not only Jan de Wit is doing this kind of activity. Even an ordinary people could be one of this people. Every person has its own reason why they made this virus.  They had their own purpose. I must say that Jan de Wit is gifted with a great knowledge. But this great knowledge could be useful if he had used it in a good way. Even though it wasn’t an intention, the consequences of it may affect many people. We could get rid of these viruses if we are very careful in reading emails or downloading files  because we might be a victim of this kind of virus. Viruses are like a disease that needs an antidote in order to be cured.  This is the reason why people had to make what we called “Anti-virus”.


References :
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-252579.html
http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/definition/Anna-Kournikova-virus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Kournikova_(computer_virus)