eWeek: World Cup Virus Season Kicks Off
Researchers at UK-based Sophos released notification of a new attack that infects Microsoft Excel files and has been disguised as a spreadsheet charting the national teams participating in the World Cup.
Identified by the security company as XF97/Yagnuul-A, the virus lives in an Excel file that offers to help people set up fantasy sports competitions related to the international soccer championship, and also attempts to market itself specifically to fans of the English Premiership, one of the world’s top professional leagues.
Once the World Cup virus has infected a PC, it begins forwarding itself to other people using the corrupted machine and may also send itself to people listed in any e-mail client software on the device, Sophos said.
The Excel virus marks the second World Cup-oriented attack identified by the company in the last week. On May 4, Sophos detailed a Trojan virus dubbed Troj/Haxdoor-IN, which cloaked itself as a wall chart of the teams competing in the tourney that fans could print out and use to follow the action. —see article link for more details.