INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Cybersecurity officials in Paris declined to detail the range of the attacks that they have already encountered
(Photo: Bloomberg)5 min read Last Updated : Jul 26 2024 | 7:24 AM ISTBy Jamie TarabayLast month, websites for a French film festival and
the Grand Palais, a historic exhibition and museum complex in Paris, shut down after a cyberattack
Researchers tracked the episodes to a group of hacktivists affiliated with Russian intelligence and reported that the hackers described it
They have many reasons to worry
Russia, for one, is shut out of the Games
Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and the South China Sea are running high, and cybercriminals continue to bombard corporate computer
networks with hacking attempts.
A collection of government, private-sector and Olympic cybersecurity specialists have spent months
director at Cisco Systems France, an official partner of the Games
with them to audit their systems for potential cybersecurity flaws
The agency said it has a task force of 630 employees assigned to the Games.They have US allies alongside them
Working out of a joint operations center are employees for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, known as CISA, sharing threat
intelligence and working with critical sectors of the economies of both the US and France ahead of the Games, said Scott McConnell, a CISA
Olympics, in addition to affiliated organisations such as anti-doping agencies
At the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, for instance, hackers crippled the online ticketing system and cut Wi-Fi at the stadium during the
said Russian state actors hacked the computer networks of over a dozen national and international anti-doping organisations
The attacks came as the World Anti-Doping Agency was set to mete out more penalties for Russia, after the failed drug tests of Russian
athletes competing in the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics had been erased from a critical data set.
This time around, Russia is banned for
breaching the Olympic charter by including sports organisations inside Ukraine as its own
the attacks that they have already encountered
hacked in May and her profile picture was changed before the account was restored, according to French media reports
In June, scammers set up fake ticketing websites intended to defraud spectators, but they were discovered and removed, cybersecurity firm
Intel 471 reported.
Suspicious social media accounts, meanwhile, are trying to sway public opinion about the Games.
In June, Microsoft
reported that a pro-Russian propaganda effort was using artificial intelligence to suggest that violence is likely to occur at the Paris
Olympics would be canceled due to threats of terrorism or civil war in France, said Sarah Boutboul, an intelligence analyst for Blackbird AI
Propelled by Russian influencers and bots, the posts received tens of thousands of likes and were shared nearly 15,000 times, she
said.
In a recent interview, Jeremy Couture, who runs the cybersecurity operations center as part of the Paris 2024 organising committee,
said he sought advice from those responsible for protecting other major events, including the Rugby World Cup and the Super Bowl, to
Published: Jul 26 2024 | 7:22 AMIST
