World Cup Spam

2010-06-14

SophosLabs blogged that spammers are taking advantage of the World Cup by sending unsolicited SMS messages stating that the recipient has won a prize for a competition (that they did not enter) or that they will be receiving 5.8 million dollars.

Paul Ducklin, Sophos's Head of Technology, Asia Pacific blogged about the history of World Cup malware and different tactics used by Cybercriminals throughout the years in an effort to capitalize on World Cup 'fever'.

- For France 1998, the ZMK-J virus asked you to gamble on who would win. If you got the answer wrong, the malware triggered a warhead which was capable of wiping all the data off your hard drive.

- In 2002, Chick-F spread via email and instant messages, posing as a web utility which would bring up-to-the-minute results from Korea and Japan.

- And In 2006, German malware Zasran-D offered you a backdoor (remote access) virus under the guise of free tickets.

Ducklin writes, "Don't let your guard down. And since many of us will know friends who are going to, or who are already in, South Africa, don't be fooled by Advance Fee Fraud criminals trying to scam you with sob stories about your buddies, using messages such as "HELP! I GOT MUGGED IN JOBURG GOT NO MONEY WIRE ME US$1000 RIGHT AWAY PLEASE". If you do think your friends have got lost, or are stuck somewhere, or need some sort of assistance, use your common sense when getting ready to help them. Rushing out to Western Union to WIRE THEM $US1000 RIGHT AWAY is unlikely to help them. Or you."