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World Cup fans are the latest to be targeted by cyber criminals
The Conversation, Vol.11 July 2014
The Conversation Media Group
2014
Abstract
As rival football teams have been battling it out in this year’s World Cup, cyber criminals have had their eye on a different goal – to cash in on this global distraction at any opportunity.
Among the legitimate marketing campaigns, these cyber criminals have been trying to exploit the public’s enthusiasm for the most watched and most profitable sporting event in the world, attracting 400 million views per match.
In the run up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, as many as 50 fraudulent websites were shut down daily in Brazil alone.
Links to these fraudulent websites are spread by massive spam campaigns sending billions of spam messages daily to dupe unwitting fans into opening links which lead to fake ticket websites, cash giveaways and attempts to steal personal data.
Some of these are so convincing that even Brazil’s own Ministry of External Relations has been caught out. Hackers even managed to take down the official websites of the Sao Paulo Military Police and the official World Cup 2014 Brazil.
Details
- Title
- World Cup fans are the latest to be targeted by cyber criminals
- Authors/Creators
- N. Thompson (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- The Conversation, Vol.11 July 2014
- Publisher
- The Conversation Media Group
- Identifiers
- 991005541547507891
- Copyright
- The Author
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Engineering and Information Technology
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Other
- Publisher URL
- http://theconversation.com/au
- Resource Sub-type
- Nonrefereed Article
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