The 2014 World Cup has just wrapped up in Brazil and Argentina were not the only losers according to security vendor Trend Micro.
The20th world championship of football was by far the most connected world cup in the history of the event according to Brazilian telecommunications company Oi.
The firm provided connections at all 12 venues across the country as well as the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Rio de Janeiro. It said members of the media, sponsors, volunteers and FIFA officials generated 32 terabytes of data in just 10 days. The figure excludes the public Wi-Fi networks that Oi installed at each stadium.
Trend Micro said this overwhelming amount of traffic was not without dangers to consumers, with a number of scams attempted during the event.
The firm suggested the danger was due to an increase in the threats designed to take advantage of the global interest, from phishing websites to spam to malicious mobile apps.
The vendor said one phishing scheme used an existing promotion by an online banking website as bait, managing to catch more than 3000 users unaware in a span of 72 hours, with the majority coming from well-connected countries such as Australia.
Trend Micro released a graph that showed countries affected by the attack. The United States was top of the list with 19 per cent, followed by Japan (14 per cent) and Germany (12 per cent). Australia was way down on the list with only two per cent affected.
Trend Micro also conducted a survey to determine what type of sports fans were most prevalent around the world and how they can secure themselves from major sporting events like the World Cup.
In APAC, the survey found that the most common fan was the “curious observer” meaning many fans in the region are vulnerable to online attacks because of their lack of familiarity with sporting related threats.
