Symantec Predicts Rise in FIFA World Cup Related Spam and Phishing Scam

Security firm Symantec has cautioned football fans to be careful while buying tickets online for 2010 FIFA World Cup scheduled to be held in South Africa, after England qualified for the prestigious tournament in the second week of September 2009.

The security company informed that phishers and spammers find prestigious sporting events as major opportunity events for launching spam and phishing campaigns. In light of the aforementioned fact, Symantec has predicted a massive increase in World Cup-related phishing and spam attacks lining up to the event in June and July 2010.

Senior security researcher at Symantec, Candid Wueest, stated that as events come closer, fans are likely to take risks and buy tickets by means of illegal channels or show higher tendency to take the promises in the uninvited mails as true, reported Computerweekly.com on September 14, 2009.

Wueest further informed that cyber criminals will either try to hack authentic sites to harvest personal details or spam netizens with messages that try to trick users into visiting fraudulent sites where their private details can be easily accesssed.

Also, Symantec added that after analysis, it has been found that with major events approaching, such themed cyber attacks tend to surge.

Moreover, according to the firm's monthly spam reports, nearly 10% of total spam e-mails in 2008 were related to fraud, like those advertising bogus tickets. Apart from this, during the last FIFA World Cup (2008), associated phishing attacks rose by 40%. Almost 4,615 phishing hosts were detected per month in 2008, an increase of 66% over 2007.

Therefore, Symantec urged Internet users to buy tickets from FIFA-registered sellers only. Also, it asked football fans not to believe online ticket offerings that appear too good to be true. Football fans are being recommended to be careful while clicking suspicious links so as not to find themselves on phishing sites.

Reportedly, Symantec's suggestion to fans is being supported by another security firm McAfee. Web users were lately advised by McAfee also to be cautious of a targeted phishing scam themed on the diamond anniversary of the "South African Airways" (SAA).

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» SPAMfighter News - 10/3/2009