Symantec Hosted Services warns of targeted World Cup attacks

Security experts are warning of yet more World Cup related threats, this time more targeted attacks which use the tournament as a lure to get users to open malicious attachments containing information stealing Trojans.

Symantec Hosted Services malware data analyst Dan Bleaken wrote in a blog post of three recently spotted attacks.

The first was emailed out to a small number of employees at a large US-based firm and claims to contain an attachment detailing the full match schedule of the tournament.

The attachment actually contains a backdoor executable allowing the attacker "to stealthily access data on the victim's PC, and/or access other systems on that network", he wrote.

The second attack was similar but targeted at only two users. The final attack encourages users to take part in a prediction league and download a malware-ridden document in order to fill in their match score predictions.

The same two employees were targeted as in the second attack, said Bleaken.

"MessageLabs Intelligence frequently sees certain users in certain organisations attacked again and again, month after month, either by one gang, or by multiple gangs," he added.

"The attackers clearly have these particular users in sight, and they are determined to get their attack through to them, and access their sensitive or valuable data."