MUMBAI: The 2014 FIFA World Cup has come to an end. This month-long tournament brought together the best soccer players in the world to battle for their countries. For the millions of die-hard soccer fans that could not watch the games on television during typical work hours, many turned to the internet to find any way to watch the action as the excitement of the games heightened. The cybercriminal communities have seized this opportunity to deceive fans online by broadcasting unsolicited advertisements for free live online streaming of the event and fake world cup related promotions that are difficult to resist. This introduces serious security risks and productivity concerns to the enterprise. These are classic baiting techniques that often result into dangerous fraud, phishing and malware attacks.

Over the last week, the Dell SonicWALL threats research team has been tracking down all World Cup related spam emails. The emails have a common theme of trying to lure users of providing their personal information in exchange for full access to live streaming videos or to claim prizes from a FIFA lottery.

 For soccer fans inside and outside of the workplace that are looking for free online streaming of the games on their computers, laptops or mobile devices, they’re presented with plenty of bogus sites on the web. Some of these sites will redirect to another URL requiring users to provide their credit card information for full access to live streaming while others will prompt users to download special video playback software or install “missing plugins” that almost assuredly, if users click that URL, they will most likely download malware onto their devices.

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