Scammers Take Advantage Of Fans For Upcoming World Cup

If you happen to live with someone from a country other than the United States, as I do, you probably know that there is a very important sporting event coming up in a very short time. Yes, it’s nearly time for the quadrennial event: The FIFA World Cup.

For those of you not in the know, this is probably the largest and most important “football” (or as we in the U.S. call it, “soccer”) event for these fans. And cyber criminals know that their audience will be HUGE if they create scams related to this monumental event. Kaspersky Labs has seen current ones that claim to have “great deals” on flights, hotels, and transportation to Russia for the events, and free or cheap tickets to the games.

Those seeking a good deal just have to be convinced to go to a fake website where they enter in payment information. Typically, the links to these sites arrive via an email. So, first order of business…don’t click these links. If you didn’t expect or solicit a link, consider it malicious and don’t click it.

Kaspersky found spikes in the number of phishing web pages during sales for the match tickets. Each time the games went on sale, email messages went out to coincide with them. It’s anticipated this behavior will continue throughout the tournament. They are making very good clones of official FIFA web pages and sites and offering fake tickets and freebie giveaways. In late May, when many would be booking flights, fake cheap flight offers were abundant.

To make sure that the sites are believable, the criminals register real domains with names that resemble something related to the World Cup. Often it has the words “worldcup,” “FIFA,” “Russia2018,” or other similar names. However, for the savvy web user, if you pay attention, many of them look “unnatural” as Kaspersky said. For example, if you hover the mouse pointer over the link in the email, one may be “fifa.ucozx.site.” Be sure to pay close attention to the sites you are entering in details such as your payment card numbers. Do some research and make sure the sites you are using are official FIFA approved organizations. This goes for purchasing swag too. Often, it’s not only tickets that are used for scams, but merchandise too.

If you don’t have someone promising to attach themselves to the sofa for a month to watch all of the games as I do, you may not know that the FIFA World Cup games take place from June 14 to July 15 in Russia. Beware of scams throughout that time frame, and even beyond as they take advantage of swag sales for the winning team.

Stickley on Security
June 14, 2018