"Along with hundreds of millions of soccer fans on all continents, the FIFA World Cup has also close followers from the dark side. Cybercriminals abuse the interest in the event by sending tons of messages with malicious load, VirusBuster warns.Every day, VirusBuster's spam lab of analyses and categorizes tens of thousands of e-mail messages captured by the company's users, partners and spam traps, Now, worried by the catch of the last few days, the Hungary-based specialist of information security has decided to go public with its findings.
"As it could be expected, malcreants have set out to ride the enormous wave of interest in the soccer world cup. We have detected a scary, and growing, number of spam messages, which use fake FIFA-related news to entice users into opening some kind of attachment. In most cases, the attached file contains malware", says Szilárd Stange, VirusBuster's product manager for technology.
The messages come in English. A typical text, for example, runs like this: "FIFA World Cup 2010 scandal news, read attached document." Users who rush to click on the file, however, will be probably bitterly disappointed. Rather than some juicy scandal report, they will see malware getting installed on their machine.
"Never open such messages. Trash them immediately", VirusBuster's Stange suggests. But that's not the end of his expert advice. "Beware: it's not only spam that cybercriminals use to take dark advantage of the FIFA World Cup. They have also set up many malicious websites for the occasion. Therefore, browse the web with special care, and remember to use up-to-date antivirus software", he adds.
About VirusBuster Ltd.
With its over 15 years of experience, VirusBuster Ltd. (www.virusbuster.hu) has international reputation in the field of IT security. Based in Budapest, Hungary, the company delivers full-fledged anti-virus and other security solutions on all major platforms to its customers on five continents. Virusbuster’s software has been recognized with numerous prizes and certificates from many independent testing organizations. Its flagship product, VirusBuster Professional, has won several “Virus Bulletin 100%” awards, “Checkmark Anti-Virus Level One” and “CheckVir” certifications. It received the “Desktop/Server Anti-Virus Detection” certification, and, in 2007 and 2008, the “Desktop/Server Anti-Virus Cleaning” certification from ICSA Labs.
The company also attained OESISOK certification in 2008, which proves that its applications are fully interoperable with the network devices of market-leading technology vendors, such as Cisco, Juniper, NORTEL, 3Com and F5, and they are compatible with network protection (endpoint health validator) systems, including NAP, NAC and TNC.
VirusBuster’s experts have gained worldwide recognition, and are regular presenters at international conferences. CEO Julianna Bozsó received the “The IT Director of 2008 award” from the Hungarian Association of IT Companies (IVSZ).
The company was awarded the “Innovative business solution” prize in 2003, and was named as an “IT Hopeful” in 2004. It won two “Distinguished Software Exporter” titles from IVSZ. VirusBuster has been certified as meeting the ISO 9001:2001 quality assurance standard since 2005. In 2009, the company's web store earned a "Fair Business" certificate, and VirusBuster was awarded Hungary's Business Ethics Prize."
Source: VirusBuster Ltd
More information from Zoltán Mikolás - PR manager
16.06.2010