Waka waka… It is time for cyber criminals to cash in on the soccer World Cup fever.
A recent research report by the McAfee labs stated that a large number of emails are being sent to people from websites created in name of the Fifa World Cup 2010. The mails come with catchy subjects, such as ‘Fifa World Cup promotion lottery’, ‘South Africa 2010 World Cup Lotto Draw’, ‘Claim your Fifa world Cup football award/ticket’.
The cyber mafia is sending these emails to millions of people around the globe, McAfee lab expert Sam Masiello said. Some mails promises a jackpot amount of $1 million, to claim which the recipient needs to furnish just the basic details about him/her.
The victim is asked to give his/her name, address, marital status, age, sex, occupation and company name. The scamsters also ask for the mobile phone number of the victim during registration.
According to Ambarish Deshpande, director, Channel and Alliances, McAfee labs, Midmarket South Asia, once the cyber criminals get hold of the mobile number of the victim, they use it to send spam to the mobile phone. It infects the phone and turns it into a zombie, which can easily be controlled by the cyber criminals. It also enables the scamsters to access SIM card files, send SMS-s, MMS-s, to make calls and use the victim’s contact information, and also misuse the camera and microphone of the zombie mobile without the victim’s knowledge.
Once under the control of cyber criminals, the victim’s mobile could be used to send spam to the people on his contact list.
Sahir Hidayatullah, senior R&D consultant from Miel e-security, said, “Once the mafia has the control of a mobile phone, it can be used to get banking and financial transaction details of the victim, which might later be used to siphon off funds from his account.
The mobile number can also be used to send phishing messages to other people.”
An MMS sent from an infected mobile to the people on its list of contacts will infect the recipient mobiles too, as the receivers will open the attachment seeing that it has come from a known person.
McAfee lab says that the only way to avoid such attacks is to avoid visiting websites promising such lotteries and delete any such emails received on cellphones.
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