A Trojan virus that exploits soccer

The president of the German Federal Office for Information Technology Security (BSI) drew attention to viruses and other malware scheduled for the time of the World Cup.

Udo Helmbrecht told a privacy convention in Berlin that at each world event, virus writers try to exploit people’s good faith and excessive curiosity in the form of e-mails containing topical malware.

In the first days of May, a letter of this type, containing a Trojan virus, already appeared. The email with the subject line "Fußball Weltmeisterschaft 2006 in Deutschland" promises the entire schedule of the World Cup, which only needs to be run by the self-extracting Excel file. If we do this, we install a Trojan intruding program on our computer when starting the googlebook.exe file attached to the letter.

The BSI has already begun an investigation into the case, which has resulted in the data collected by the Trojan being transmitted to a server in the U.S., so the FBI has also been involved in the investigation.