Tracking Over 35,000 Fake Sites in the 2026 World Cup Scam Wave
Trend Micro tracked 35,538 malicious sites exploiting the 2026 FIFA World Cup between January–June 2026, generating 1.48 million visits from Japan alone. The scams fall into three categories: counterfeit merchandise shops, near-perfect clones of official ticket sites that harvest credit cards and OTPs in real-time to bypass MFA, and fake live-streaming pages that redirect to ad-fraud networks or credential-harvesting sign-ups.