World Cup virus goal: The PC

World Cup fever is on, however the event could be marred by a new trojan horse that poses as a match chart for the soccer event.

World Cup fever is on, however the event could be marred by a new trojan horse that poses as a match chart for the soccer event.

According to anti-virus software vendor, Sophos, the Troj/Haxdoor-IN trojan horse has been spammed out to computer users in a message offering a free wall chart for fsoccer fans who wish to follow their favourite teams in the international tournament.

PC users tempted into running the malicious program risk allowing hackers to gain access to their computer for criminal ends.

So far, Sophos reports that examples of the emails have only been in German, but there was no reason to believe that hackers will not switch to using other languages to increase the pool of potential victims, it said.

The trojan isn't the first instance of criminals attempting to entrap soccer fans, Sophos said. A year ago, the Sober-N worm offered tickets to the tournament in an attempt to entrap unprotected users.

In 2002, the VBS/Chick-F virus tried to exploit workers desperate to find out the latest scores from the World Cup in Sth. Korea/Japan.

In 1998, in the run-up to the World cup competition in France, another soccer-inspired virus asked infected victims to gamble on who the winner might be, and if the user did not choose the right team the virus was triggered, wipping data off hard drives.