Anna Kournikova Backhands Corporate Servers

The young Russian, known for her "skills" both on and off the court, appears to have been a good choice for a disguise by the hacker who created the virus, which has been detected between 50 and 100 times per hour by one major corporation. The virus was first discovered last August, but has only recently gained widespread notoriety. It has also been discovered that the virus resides on the servers of more than 50 major U.S. companies.

The Kournikova virus, also known as "VBS," "SST," and "On the Fly," is spread through e-mail and has a subject that reads "Here you have, ;o." The text of the virus-infected e-mail reads "Hi: Check this!" When these e-mails are opened in Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client, which is used widely throughout the world, the virus infects the user's computer and sends itself to each e-mail address in the user's address book.

Vincent Weafer, of the Symantec Antivirus Research Center, has noted that the virus is not dangerous from a data destruction viewpoint, but that it can clog e-mail servers and end up crashing important communications lines.