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Hackers have been preparing longer than the footballers
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(Image credit: Michael Regan - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
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- Scammers pre‑position FIFA World Cup infrastructure
- Fraud spans finance, travel, gambling sectors
- Businesses urged to prepare before tournament begins
Scams themed around the FIFA World Cup 2026 will peak, as one might expect, just before and during the world cup. However, in order to maximize the efficiency of these scams, the fraudsters need a lot more time.
This is according to cybersecurity researchers Check Point Research who, in a new blog post, said that scammers have been positioning for months now, focusing on three key pillars: finance, travel and hospitality, and gambling. Now, as the World Cup is about to begin, the infrastructure for scams is “already built” and most of the fraudulent sites already live.
“The financial ecosystem around any mega-event is exactly the kind of environment threat actors prefer,” CPR explains. “Surging transaction volumes, unfamiliar merchants, compressed purchasing windows, and international flows all reduce the scrutiny that normally slows fraud down.”
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Lacking DMARC enforcement complicates things
Match tickets might be scarce, but there will be an abundance of scams. Shady cryptocurrency tokens, with no affiliation with FIFA, with a completely anonymous team, and no use case, are already circulating.
Fake hotels, ticketing sites, and even merchandise sellers, are everywhere. To make matters worse, legitimate business partners aren’t helping either - a third of them lack sufficient DMARC enforcement, which means they can be easily spoofed by cybercriminals.
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For CPR, this means one thing - to protect their good name, as well as the wellbeing of their customers, businesses must do the same thing criminals are doing - prepare well in advance.
“Threat actors are already pre-positioning infrastructure, test entry points, and activate campaigns at moments of peak visibility and operational pressure. By the time the tournament is live, the window for preparation will have largely closed,” they said. “For organizations, this means preparation must happen before the tournament begins.”
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CATEGORIES Cyber Security Computing Security Computing Sead FadilpašićSocial Links NavigationSead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.
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