Symantec Says that Online Scams on FIFA World CUP Identified

Security firm Symantec has identified many Internet scams launched by cybercriminals which are based on FIFA World Cup 2014 tournament that started from 12th June, 2014 in Brazil.

One of the swindles identified by Symantec includes dubious emails promoting free tickets for the world famous football tournament but actually it contains a malicious ZIP file. The latest campaign is serving up a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called DarkComet.

Infosecurity-magazine.com published a report on 11th June, 2014 quoting an explanation of Satnam Narang, a Researcher with Symantec, as "the most common scam of World Cup involves free tickets. After all, who would not want an all-expense paid trip to Brazil?Scammers are aware that a dream come true is difficult to pass up and hence circulate emails promising anything possible."

These emails contain news and highlight reels about World Cup teams and players are being used to lure users into clicking and opening malicious links and attachments.

Narang noted that emails circulating presently are about a young star player of Brazilian national football team namely Neymar da Silva Santos Junior containing a malicious word document which exploits a known vulnerability in Microsoft Word. He also said that scammers use players like Neymar and Lionel Messi, a national star player of Argentina, to trick and target victims through email or social networking services.

These emails seem to be from an official source but wrong grammar and spellings (like Argentinian is miss-spelt in the above email) and the source looks like a scam.

Besides the above scams, fans want to watch the match online are asked to download and install a video player which is mostly maligned with malware.

Therefore, such fans are advised to use the official website of FIFA to follow the event and to use services of trusted sports channels only and stay away from dubious websites.

It is suggested, by security experts, that web users should also try and upgrade their operating systems and other software as an extra precaution which would ensure utmost security to their web-enabled services against malware.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/20/2014