Football fans were warned today to be careful when buying tickets online for the forthcoming Euro 2008 championships, after the discovery of malicious code on the website of a major European ticket resale company.

The site in question has a high search engine ranking and a presence among sponsored links, indicating that the hackers may have a huge pool of potential victims, according to SophosLabs.

Visitors attempting to purchase tickets through the site will be exposed to the malicious script which is embedded in some of the web pages.

This malware then attempts to download further attacks from another remote website.

"This is not the first time that hackers have attempted to capitalise on sporting events," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"Unfortunately, in the run up to the competition this summer, we are likely to see more sites like this being hacked, as well as other scams preying on football fans.

"Fans keen to get tickets to a game need to make sure they don't get carried away in the excitement and score an own goal before the football even kicks off. "

Sophos urged all computer users to ensure that their security settings are up to date and able to defend against such threats.