A computer virus that posed as a photo of Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova and spread rapidly across Europe, North America and Asia, made its way into the e-mail lists of students at UW-Eau Claire Monday morning.

The virus did not cause any detectable damage to computers on campus, said Paul Diedrich, manager of Computing and Networking Services.

“It was more of a nuisance virus than a virus that causes damage,” said Diedrich, who added that the virus did briefly get around campus.

CNS became aware of the virus Monday morning. It did not have a definition of what the virus was, at first, so it put a filter on the system so the virus would stop spreading on campus.

The virus was contained on campus by Monday afternoon, Diedrich said.

He said the university subscribes for virus protection, which protects all personal computers on campus.

CNS also put out a warning to students on its Web site to prevent them from spreading the virus.

The virus, also known as VBS/SST, VBS_Kalamar and VBS/OnTheFly, was an attachment called AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs that had one of three subject lines: “Here you have ;o),” “here you are ;-)” or “here you go ;-).”

The virus spreads through Microsoft Outlook e-mail on Windows computers and is known as a worm because, if left alone, it has the capability to mail itself to the address book of the user it reaches.

A 20-year-old Dutch man was arrested yesterday after admitting to creating the virus. He posted a message Tuesday claiming responsibility for the virus.

The man said he created the virus as a warning to Internet users to update their anti-virus software.

“I never wanted to harm the people (who) opened the attachment,” the person wrote. “But, after all, it’s their own fault they got infected.”

The virus caused damage to companies by clogging their e-mail, but the university’s computers escaped damage because of its anti-virus security.

“We were fortunate it did not spread more on campus,” Diedrich said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.