04 Apr 2001
Mayor of Plattsburgh tussles with Kournikova
Daniel Stewart, mayor of Plattsburgh, NY in the USA has issued a
public warning to computer users to be wary of email from him - as
it may contain a virus.
Mayor Daniel Stewart revealed to the Plattsburgh
Press-Republican newspaper that he had been the unfortunate victim
of the VBS/SST-A
worm, which forwards itself via email purporting to contain a
graphic of Russian tennis ace, Anna Kournikova.
"The Mayor has done the right thing by warning people that
emails from him may be infected. If there's anyone to blame here
it's the virus author," said Graham Cluley, senior technology
consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "The virus author wrote and
released the worm into the wild - infecting thousands of people
around the globe in the process. To help reduce the threat from
viruses we should all practise safe computing, avoid
opening unsolicited email attachments and keep our anti-virus
software up-to-date."
Ironically, the author of the worm which infected Mayor Stewart
has himself been offered a job by the mayor of his home town in the
Netherlands.
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.