Spammers Target Football Lovers with New Fake Messages

As the 2010 FIFA World Cup has less than two months for inauguration, cyber criminals have started to exploit this mega event to trick Internet users. TrendLabs, a research lab of Trend Micro firm, detected a new threat involving this event, which came in the form of an e-mail message.

The unsolicited e-mail message contains a PDF file attachment that gives details about a lottery which the e-mail recipient has already won. The e-mail encourages the recipient to reveal his personal details and forward them to e-mail sender or contact person in order to receive the prize.

Jovi Umawing, Technical Communications Specialist, Trend Micro's Technical Communications Department, said that the most interesting thing about the spam campaign was purported sender of the e-mail - "Mrs. Michelle Matins." She was portrayed as the Executive Vice President, but she was also the signatory of the 419 scam known as the Nigeria scam, as reported by v3 on May 8, 2010.

Umawing further added that some retrieved samples didn't have any attachment, and they were presented as being sent by "Geoff Thompson," FIFA Vice President. Further investigation highlighted that the concerned person had been related to an old scam.

Interestingly, TrendLabs discovered the first spam attacks targeting the 2010 FIFA World Cup in the beginning of 2009 - almost 18 months back the inauguration of mega event. The spam detected then had been involved in winning of an online lottery.

The TrendLabs security experts reported another spam campaign targeting FIFA World Cup in the first week of May 2010.

As the event draws closer with each passing day, security experts have advised the computer users that they should stay cautious and browse the Internet carefully. They also suggested that it is extremely important to avoid opening unknown and unsolicited e-mails and links. The users should not open unsolicited attachment despite they claimed to have been sent by the FIFA World Cup organizers. Moreover, the users should install necessary security plug-ins and patches and keep their systems updates so that any possibility of hacking could be avoided.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 5/19/2010