The most dangerous Euro 2008 football team online

Davey Winder
Friday, 20 June 2008 20:47

Your IT - Home IT

With the Euro 2008 football championships well and truly underway, the Internet is proving to be the perfect place to catch up on scores, fixtures and soccer news. But Euro 2008 has also become a cybercrime hotspot, so we've named and shamed the most dangerous players in cyberspace.

Fantasy Football has become something of a global phenomena, giving ordinary footie fans the opportunity to put together their personal soccer dream team. As many are discovering now that Euro 2008 has hit the headlines all over Europe, as far as cybercrime is concerned the championships have taken on a nightmarish guise.

Security experts at McAfee have been using their SiteAdvisor web browser tool to track just which players' names are being used in the most cons and scams across the Internet. Cybercrooks have quickly picked up on the fact that the public is desperate for Euro 2008 information. Unsurprisingly they are now exploiting this fact to spread spam, infect machines with malware and kick off complicated phishing scams.

According to McAfee the most dangerous Euro 2008 fantasy football team online comprises of the following players:

1. Gigi Buffon (Italy)
2. Alessandro Del Piero (Italy)
3. Fabio Cannavaro (Italy)
4. Klass Jan Huntelaar (Netherlands)
5. Freddie Ljungberg (Sweden)
6. Tomas Grigera (Czech Republic)
7. Martin Harnik (Austria)        
8. Cennaro Gattuso (Italy)
9. Ruud Van Nistelrooy (Netherlands)
10. Cesc Fabregas (Spain)
11. Carlos Puyol (Spain)

Apparently the Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi 'Gigi' Buffon is far and away the most dangerous footballer in cyberspace right now. His safe pair of hands have reached out to the most unsafe websites out of all the Euro 2008 players.

When it comes to nationality, Italy becomes the most dangerous team to research online. It has more players linked to dodgy websites than any other competing country.

Of course, the notion of using famous names with a high media profile is nothing new. Cyber-crooks will use anything, and anybody, in order to get unsuspecting users to click links, download suspect files and spread their malicious payload.