Kournikova crowned virus queen in February

The biggest virus infection of February was undoubtedly Anna Kournikova, the worm represented 38.2 per cent total viruses reported in the wild, according to anti-virus vendor Sophos.

Despite the fact it was relatively simple, it still managed to cause thousands of pounds of damage in downtime and network congestion. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "This month's biggest virus - VBS/SST-A, aka the Kournikova worm - was not the work of a genius. Yet it still managed to fool hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Come on, wake up everybody! Don't fall for the next virus like this. Use up-to-date anti-virus software, obey the basic rules of safe computing and above all, think before you click." The author of the Kournikova worm, OnTheFly, handed himself over to the Dutch police and confessed his crime. Anti-virus vendors are concerned that the mayor of OnTheFly's home town of Sneek, has suggested the virus writer should be offered a job in the council's IT department on the basis of his exploits. Trend Micro had issued a medium grade risk on Troj_MyBabyPic.A which is currently spreading in the wild. The virus arrives via email with the subject line "My Babypic" and attachment, "MYBABYPIC.EXE". Upon execution, it displays a message box with a picture. The Trojan needs Windows Scripting Host to function and upon execution tries to connect to a certain website. A peer-to-peer virus was found in the wild just few days ago. Users of Napster rival Gnutella are being exposed to a worm that is threatening to infect their machines after gaining entry disguised as a song file. The worm is known Mandragore and GnutellaMandragore, spreads by monitoring file searches on the Gnutella system and changing its name to whatever the user is looking for. For example, if a user is looking for a song by US singer Britney Spears the virus will disguise itself as one of her songs in the hope that users will download it, and infect their machines. Anti-virus specialist F-Secure has issued a level 2 security alert over the virus - the second most serious warning it can issue.