Phishing is a form of Internet fraud in which criminals create a fake copy of a popular site (an email service, an Internet banking website, a social networking site) and lure users to these rogue web pages, who unsuspectingly enter their log-in information.
Kaspersky noted that cyber criminals used the ban imposed by FIFA on controversial Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez for the phishing activities.
The web page imitates the official FIFA website and prompts visitors to sign a petition in defense of Suarez.
Those fans who are unhappy about the Uruguayan's disqualification and add their details to the petition could potentially end up on a spam mailing list, on the receiving end of a malicious attachment or are even subjected to a targeted attack, the firm said in a statement.
"The phishing page matches the design of the official website and all links on it redirect users to FIFA's official site, www.Fifa.Com. The phishing domain was created on June 27, 2014," it said.
"Unsuspecting fans shared links to the fake petition on their Facebook pages. This enabled the phishing link to spread widely across Facebook in just a couple of days.
Messages with links to the phishing page were also seen on dedicated forums, which is probably how users originally reached the offending page," Kaspersky said.
"Armed with users' email addresses and telephone numbers, cyber criminals can conduct targeted attacks involving banking Trojans for computers and mobile devices.
"This technique is used to get round two-factor authentication in online banking systems in cases where a one-time password is sent via SMS," Kaspersky Lab Content Analyst Nadezhda Demidova said.
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