London, UK, 13 February 2001 - GFI, leading developer of email security & anti-virus software, warns that the AnnaKournikova worm, a new email virus, is in the wild and spreading fast. This mass-mailing worm can be blocked at server level by Mail essentials, GFI's email content checking and anti-virus solution.

The AnnaKournikova worm is a VB Script virus that is spreading rapidly via email. It travels in an email with "Here you have, ;o)" as the subject and "Hi: Check This!" as the body text, and is transmitted as an email attachment called AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs that purports to be an image of the famous Russian tennis star. If the receiver clicks upon this attachment, the virus is activated and the worm copies itself to the Windows directory and also sends itself out to all contacts in the recipient's email address book.

"Despite the havoc wrought by the LoveLetter VB Script virus last May, many organizations are still not content filtering all mail at email server level. It is astonishing how many companies rely simply on telling users not to open attachments," said Nick Galea, CEO of GFI.

"With Mail essentials, blocking this virus is easy: Just set Mail essentials to block VBS attachments in the Content Checking tab. This will block any incoming/outgoing infected mail. This way, Mail essentials will block all viruses of this kind, as it will quarantine any attachments using a VB script."

As one Mail essentials user pointed out, anti-virus protection is not enough: "Due to our Fire District running Mail essentials for Exchange 5.5, we were able to filter out all of the latest AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs viruses, which our 'top-notch' Symantec AV Corporate Edition failed to catch: Since the virus is so new, many Antivirus products are failing to quarantine it. We must have received 12 copies today alone already, with all being caught," said Rod Conway, Deputy Fire Marshall of the Keizer Fire District in Oregon, USA.

The AnnaKournikova worm is a mass mailer as had been the Melissa virus, a Word macro virus that first appeared in March 1999, causing millions of dollars worth of damage due to downtime and information security costs.

Mail essentials for Exchange/SMTP is an email content checking and anti-virus solution that removes all types of email-borne threats before they can affect an organization's email users. Spam, viruses, dangerous attachments and offensive content can be removed before the email users can receive them. More information can be found at http://www.gfi.com/me/index.html. The full version of Mail essentials is available from $350.