A Dutch virus writer known as OnTheFly has admitted to writing the Anna Kournikova virus, as Excite@Home compiled evidence against a subscriber in the Netherlands who's believed to be the same person.

"I didn't do it for fun," stated OnTheFly in a Web posting. "I never wanted to harm the people who opened the attachment. But after all: it's their own fault they got infected."

The statement confirmed the OnTheFly used a readily available virus-writing tool to create the Anna Kournikova virus, but exonerated the tool's author of aiding him.

Meanwhile, a source at Excite@Home has acknowledged that the company is currently trying to identify and ban a Dutch subscriber who appears to be OnTheFly. A previous virus, known as Iwa, had been posted to the alt.comp.virus.source.code newsgroup using Excite@Home Netherlands' network.

"We are working on it," said the Excite@Home source, who asked not to be named. "It is a clear violation of the acceptable use policy. We will come down hard and fast."

The information connecting OnTheFly and the Excite@Home subscriber had been first found by Richard Smith, chief technology officer of the Privacy Foundation and a key online detective in the Melissa virus case two years ago.

Also known as VBS/SST, VBS_Kalamar, and VBS/OnTheFly, the Anna Kournikova virus initially poses as an attachment -AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs - that has been included in an email with one of several similar subject lines.

The attachment purports to be a photograph of Kournikova, a 19-year-old Russian tennis player.

The virus uses Visual Basic to infect Windows systems and then, on systems with Outlook, mails itself out to the entire address book. Its ability to mail itself out to a large number of people classifies the virus as a worm.

Anna vs. Melissa
"It's going to be more widespread than Melissa but less than the Love Bug," said Vincent Weafer, director of the Symantec AntiVirus Research Centre.

Melissa kicked off a new age of fast-spreading, hard-hitting worms in March 1999, when the macro virus flooded email systems by using commands built into Microsoft Word to control email. Programmer David Smith, who pleady guilty to authoring and releasing the virus, is currently awaiting sentencing.

In May, a Visual Basic script virus masquerading as a love letter from a friend spread quickly after it was released from the Philippines. A 22-year-old computer school dropout, Onel de Guzman, has since been charged for crimes related to the release of the LoveLetter virus.

Due to the lack of laws regarding computer crime in the Philippines, de Guzman is facing charges of credit-card fraud. Like Melissa, the Anna Kournikova virus does not damage the systems that it's infected, Weafer said.

In his online admission, OnTheFly said a recent study by market researcher IDC, which concluded that surfers had not learned anything from recent virus attacks like LoveLetter, gave him the idea to write the virus.

"I think IDC is right," he wrote. "I also think that you agree with me, according to the rate of spreading."

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