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2010 FIFA World Cup on the radar of cyber criminals

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE,INDIA:With the 2010 FIFA World Cup less than two months away, cyber criminals are banking on this prestigious international football event to trick users. TrendLabs spotted the latest threat involving this, and it came in the form of an email message currently being spammed in the world.

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Trend Micro Researchers were alerted to the discovery of a spam mail carrying a .PDF file attachment which was found to contain details about the lottery which the mail claims that the recipient has allegedly won. It also instructed the recipient to give out personal information and send them to the contact person or email sender before the prize could be claimed.

According to a press release, TrendLabs documented the very first spam attack banking on the 2010 FIFA World Cup back in early 2009–a good 18 months before the actual event takes place. The spam involved then was about the recipient winning the online lottery.

Some samples retrieved were noticeably free from attachments, and they were purportedly sent by a certain FIFA Vice President named Geoff Thompson. Further, investigation revealed that “he,” too, was related to an old scam.

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The report said that, earlier, researchers were alerted to the discovery of a spam mail that asked people to Shop Online for IPL related products, which in return wanted to reveal  very significant personal information while shopping and also guided to fake shopping websites which on clicking the link allowed the Hacker to get into the systems.

Researchers were also alerted a good 8 months back when the final draw was announced that the FIFA World Cup 2010 is going to be there in South Africa, The mail was a fake lottery mail which claimed that the recipient has won a large sum of money from the South African Football Association. After contacting the lottery manager, the victim of the scam will be asked to pay “processing fees” or “transfer charges” so that the winnings can be distributed. Don’t expect to ever see a payment.

Trend Micro has cautioned that sports events are no exception to the rule that the spammers or the cyber criminals will not target them for there personal interest and general audience in wee of information and entertainment fall prey to such attacks.

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