FIFA and the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ signed an agreement to make FIFA a member of scientific and technical cooperation Netoscope designed to provide security in the area of domain name usage. FIFA will share data about domains that are used for phishing in the illegal sale of tickets to the World Cup 2018 in Russia.
Other organizations that cooperate through Netoscope also fight phishing. FIFA's specialization in this project is to detect cases of illegal ticket sales for the World Cup 2018 on Runet without an agreement with tournament organizers and to add information about these illegal resources to Netoscope. Further on, Netoscope members will analyze information gotten from FIFA about suspicious websites. In case the illegality of the activities is confirmed, the resource will be blocked. The closer the opening of the World Cup is the more topical the ticket fraud becomes. Therefore, the fact that FIFA is joining Netoscope is a timely measure aimed primarily at protecting interests of the fans.
Andrey Vorobyev, CEO of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, said: “FIFA World Cup 2018 is a very important event for the whole country, which will largely determine the face of Russia in 2018. We believe it is very important to provide safety for Russian fans and foreign guests and to avoid potential unpleasant situations. In our work we use the best practices gathered in this area including the experience during the Olympic games in Sochi in 2014.”
Daniel Zohny, the Head of Intellectual Property at FIFA, said: “We see illegal sales and distribution of tickets as a serious problem. In relation to this FIFA has a complex program designed to protect fans’ interests from different risks. For example, buying fake tickets, getting tickets to the wrong seats using illegal services; moreover, there is always a risk of being a victim of fraud. Participating in Netoscope will significantly increase the effectiveness of measures to fight ticket scammers online in Russia. We remind that the only legal platform to buy tickets is the website FIFA.com/bilet, and we always encourage fans to use only official sales channels.”
Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ created a research platform to aggregate information about malicious resources in country-code top-level domains in 2012. In a year an information and analytical resource Netoscope was created on the Internet. This is a portal where the most recent data on cyber threat distribution online and the progress on fighting against malicious resources are published. As of today, apart from FIFA there are over ten companies that cooperate through Netoscope: OOO BIZon, LLC; Group-IB, Kaspersky Lab, Mail.ru, Roskomnadzor, Rostelecom, RU-CERT, Technical Center of Internet, Yandex, SURFnet, iThreat Cyber Group Inc., SkyDNS and others.
