One of the year's most popular US sporting events is being targeted by malware distributors.

According to a report from security firm Websense, a new blog spamming campaign is capitalising on the US university basketball championship.

Also known as March Madness the 64-team tournament has become popular among both casual and serious sports fans, who often create betting pools to predict the outcome of the single-elimination 'bracket' contest.

This year, the tournament also appears to have drawn the attention of malware writers. Websense reports that a new spamming campaign is attempting to drive users to a number of malicious sites.

The company said that many of the sites contain keywords such as 'bracket', 'tournament' and 'NCAA' (the governing body of university sports in the US). The pages then forward the user to another site which attempts a fake malware scan in order to prompt the user into installing a fake anti-virus application.

Websense is advising users to be cautious when searching for information on the tournament.

The use of sporting events as a lure for malware infection is becoming increasingly common. Last summer's Olympic games were a favorite target for cyber criminals. Current events and pop culture references are also being targeted for social engineering attacks.