Kournikova virus kit author quits

The author of the generation kit that was responsible for spawning the Kournikova virus has thrown in the towel in fear of his freedom, and has pulled the file from his website.

A message went up on [K]alamar's website at the end of last week, in which the coder expressed his fears that the authorities were going to come down hard on him. As a result he's decided to stop development on the kit - called Vbswg - and remove it from his site.

Quoting the author word for word, the message reads: "I've decided to stop the develop of Vbswg, because i've heard that some people wanna put me in jail, and i don't wanna goto jail, so, i'lls top the program and delete the linsk to it until i know i'm safe. Maybe i'll release the code. Sorry."

But industry watchers say that [K]alamar isn't wanted by the authorities, so his fears are perhaps overplayed. He did pull the virus kit from his site once before, when the media feast over the Kournikova virus first kicked off, once again fearing the long arm of the law.

However, his threat to release the source code to the public arena would probably cause more damage.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus company Sophos, said: "Obviously if he were to release the source code to the generator that would be a bad thing as it may encourage others to write construction kits which allow numbskulls to write even more viruses."