Security teams have spotted a large spike in domain registrations tied to the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup. Attackers are preparing long-lead campaigns — setting up fake ticketing, merchandise, and streaming sites months (even years) ahead of the event to harvest credentials, distribute malware, and steal payment data.
Main Takeaways
- Researchers found hundreds of suspicious domains (many using “fifa”, “worldcup”, or host-city names) that mimic legitimate services to trick fans into visiting and transacting. Cyber Security News
- The malicious sites can deliver staged JavaScript that fetches in-memory payloads, avoids disk artifacts, and injects code into legitimate processes. Cyber Security News
- Campaigns rely on aged or low-friction domains across major registrars and cheap TLDs (.online, .shop) to gain credibility and resist takedown.
What researchers observed
Hundreds of domains registered with names referencing FIFA, World Cup, and host cities, with a registration surge in August 2025. Threat actors intentionally register domains well in advance (up to 18 months) so the sites look established when fan interest peaks.
These fraudulent pages are crafted to lure visitors into interacting with content (ticket lookups, schedule pages, streaming links). Once a visitor lands on an infected page, obfuscated JavaScript performs environment checks and, if conditions match, pulls a second-stage payload from a dynamically computed CDN hostname. The loader then unpacks encrypted modules in memory and injects them into legitimate processes (for example, svchost.exe), minimizing forensic traces.
Why this matters
By exploiting fan interest and high transaction volumes, attackers can scale credential-harvesting and financial fraud. Using aged domains and polymorphic loaders makes detection, attribution, and takedown harder — a problem that will grow as the tournament approaches and related domains proliferate.
Recommended actions
- Proactively monitor and blacklist suspicious domains and newly created domains that contain tournament-related keywords.
- Harden web filtering and block known low-reputation TLDs where appropriate (.online, .shop) and enforce allowlists for corporate ticketing or streaming vendors.
- Inspect web pages for injected JavaScript and deploy runtime protection that detects in-memory unpacking and reflective injection.
- Educate users to buy tickets only from official FIFA channels or trusted vendors and verify URLs before entering payment or personal information.
Mourad Maacha 
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