A virus posing as a photo of Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova spread aggressively on Monday, as major security companies rushed to update their antivirus software to detect the fast-spreading e-mail virus.

A virus posing as a photo of Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova spread aggressively on Monday, as major security companies rushed to update their antivirus software to detect the fast-spreading e-mail virus. "Compared to the 'Love Bug', it's spreading twice as fast," said Alex Shipp, antivirus technologist with British e-mail service MessageLabs. In the five hours since MessageLabs detected the infection, its users have received almost 2,900 copies of the infected e-mail sent from more than 290 different domains. Also known as VBS/SST, the virus initially poses as an attachment--AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs--included in a message with one of three similar subject lines: "Here you are ;-)," "here you have ;o)" and "here you go ;-)." The virus uses the Visual Basic scripting language to infect Windows systems and then, on systems using Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program, mails itself out to the entire address book. The ability to mail itself out to a large number of Internet users classifies the virus as a worm. The virus does not damage the systems it has infected, said Vincent Weafer, director of Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center.