KUALA LUMPUR: With Fifa World Cup fever set to start soon, football fans will be surfing the Internet for tickets, news and other information on the tournament. They make perfect targets for cyberscammers, phishers and malware.
Security solutions vendor Symantec Corp will be particularly on guard for malicious activity on the Internet relating to the competition which begins June 11, in an effort to keep the football fans and the companies they work for safe.
On its dedicated website, www.2010netthreat.com, Symantec will provide data, commentary, safety tips and useful links for football fans going online.
According to Paul Wood, senior analyst at Symantec Hosted Services, the tournament attracts more than one billion football fans worldwide and is becoming a theme for cybercriminals.
“Historically, any large-scale sporting event has shown an increase in all kinds of cyberthreats,” he said. “Phishing attacks increased by 66% during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.”
Also, Symantec warned, two undersea communications cables landed on South African shores last July that will exacerbate the threat levels.
“History shows that malicious activity increases in a country after new bandwidth is made available,” said Wood.
Symantec has installed additional network sensors in South Africa and southern Africa to monitor traffic and feed information to customers looking to take steps to secure their networks against additional threats.
“As an example, two of our configured partners in Africa have submitted unique malicious files that have not been seen elsewhere by Symantec,” Wood said.
Heads up
Much of the threat activity will not be new to the world of cybercrime — so-called 419 scams, spam and phishing attacks will face users in the guise of special offers for the event.
“The rule is, if something looks too good to be true, then it’s likely to be a scam,” said Gordon Love, Africa regional director at Symantec.
“Also, in all cases these days a cybercriminal is looking to steal a user’s personal information — identity details, bank account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers — to steal money from a user.
“The 2010 Net Threat site will aim to tell people how they can protect themselves against such attacks,” Love said.
Internet users must also be on the alert for new varieties of scam. “Attackers are even going as far as ensuring their fake websites or sites they have ‘poisoned’ with malicious code appear at the top of search results,” he said.
“Users tend to assume that the sites that appear first tend to be legitimate and may click on them without first examining the source.”
By the time the World Cup kicks off, 3.1 million tickets will have been sold. More than 400 million people worldwide will watch each match on TV. And hundreds of millions will be on the Internet, trying to stay connected to the popular sporting event.
Cyberattackers are always finding new ways of duping people into disclosing their personal information. Being well informed and alert is as important as keeping up to date with the latest protection software updates, Symantec said.
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