Zidane head butt leads surfers to malware

If you still have questions about Zinedine Zidane's World Cup head butt, be careful where you look for answers on the web.

Miscreants are using the incident in the World Cup final as bait to install malicious code onto the PCs of unwitting fans, Websense Security Labs warned on Friday.

Websense, which monitors web security threats, has found one website that looks like an official FIFA World Cup 2006 site but isn't. The lead story is on Zidane's head butt in the final against Italy, asking: 'What did Materazzi say to Zidane?' - referring to Italy's Marco Materazzi, who was knocked over when Zidane thrust his head into Materazzi's chest.

When visiting the fake site, people can be infected with a Trojan horse downloader which, in turn, downloads additional malicious software from the site, Websense said in an alert. "This potentially occurs without user interaction," Websense said.

The malicious site was hosted in the US and up and running on Friday, waiting for new victims. It uses the underground 'Web Attacker' toolkit, which is sold on the web and facilitates web-based attacks, Websense said.

For those who are still wondering what the head butt was all about, Zidane publicly apologised last week for being sent off 10 minutes from the end of the final but claimed he did not regret his actions. Zidane stated that Materazzi insulted his mother and sister in the seconds leading up to the incident.

Joris Evers writes for CNET News.com.