A new Trojan was spammed out last night posing as a free wall chart that lets users track their team's progress in the World Cup finals.

The Haxdoor-IN Trojan arrives as an attachment in an email containing a description of the chart. The emails have only appeared in German so far, but security experts believe that other languages may also have been used.

"The World Cup is one of the biggest sporting events of the year, and fans all over the globe will be following their national team avidly," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"Malware authors are playing on this keen interest to try and infect as many people as possible in an attempt to seize control, steal from and spy on innocent users."

Once activated the Trojan alters the PC's registry files and installs more malware and allows remote control of the computer by the author.

World Cup fans have already come under attack from phishers this year, and touts hacked the World Cup ticketing computers in 2002 to jump phone queuing systems and order seats. 

In the run-up to the World Cup competition in France in 1998, another football-inspired virus asked infected victims to gamble on the outcome.

If the user did not choose the right team the virus triggered a warhead which was capable of wiping all data from the hard drive.