Anna Kournikova was a Russian tennis player who at the time was one of the world’s most Googled women. (Wayne Taylor/The Age)
The email had the subject title: “Here you have, ;0)”.
When users opened what they thought was a photo, it instead infected their computer, then sent out the email to everyone in the victim’s inbox.
Aside from embarrassing the user, the virus was entirely benign.
But the curiosity of recipients to look at a photo of an athlete caused countless company email accounts to get clogged.
Email users assumed they were being sent a photo of Anna Kournikova. (Nine Archives)
In an anonymous blog post, De Wit defended his actions.
“I never wanted to harm the people you (sic) opened the attachment,” he wrote.Â
“But after all: it’s their own fault they got infected with the AnnaKournikova virus.”
The virus was enough of a problem for the FBI to turn to another notorious hacker to track down the culprit.
David L Smith was already in custody over creating a similar virus, the so-called Melissa virus, two years earlier.
An estimated one million email accounts were infected by the Melissa virus.
Smith would help the FBI find De Wit.
But the young Dutchman would surrender to police of his own accord in his hometown of Sneek.
He faced a maximum of four years in prison and potentially tens of thousands in fines.
But the court was not so harsh, sentencing him to 150 hours of community service.
Within days of the virus being released, he was offered a job by the mayor of Sneek.
Smith wasn’t so lucky, being sentenced to 20 months in prison the following year.
Anna Kournikova’s career peaked with the Australian Open in 2001. (Nine Archives)At the time of the virus, Kournikova was at the height of her success, making the quarter finals of the Australian Open just weeks earlier.
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