The head of France's National Cybersecurity Agency said this year's Paris Olympics would be a “target”, including from foreign countries interested in “disrupting the opening ceremony and causing problems for public transport”.
The warning by Vincent Strubel, head of the French Cyber Security Agency (ANSSI), comes amid tensions in diplomatic relations between France and Russia over the Ukraine war.
French President Emmanuel Macron's comments last month suggesting the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine sparked anger in Moscow as French authorities were held accountable for past disinformation and hacking operations.
“Obviously the Olympics will be a target,” Strubel told AFP in an interview on Tuesday. “We are preparing for all types of attacks. All the ones we see on a daily basis are getting bigger, more numerous and more frequent,” he added.
These include “attacks from countries that seek to disrupt the Games for any reason or who may attempt to disrupt the opening ceremony or cause problems with public transport.” , he said on the sidelines of a cybersecurity event. Lille, northern France.
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Russia also accused the International Olympic Committee of “racism and neo-Nazism” after the Russian team was banned from the opening ceremony of the Paris Games, which begin on July 26.
Most Russian athletes are excluded from the sport, with only a handful of competitors expected to qualify for “neutral” status.
Strubel said state-sponsored cyberattacks are one of the three biggest dangers, the others being cybercriminals trying to extort money during the Olympics and “hacktivists” trying to cause trouble for entertainment or publicity. He said it was caused by a hacker.
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“For me, the worst-case scenario is a large number of small-scale attacks, followed by more serious attacks targeting the critical transport and energy infrastructure that will play a key role during the Games,” he told AFP. That's not expected,” he said.
Founded in 2009, ANSSI is France's main national cybersecurity agency, tasked with preventing, detecting and responding to attacks.
Japanese telecommunications company NTT, which provided IT security for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed due to the pandemic, reported 450 million individual cyber attacks during the previous Games, compared to 2012. That's twice as many as at the London Olympics.
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Many of these were so-called DDoS attacks that paralyzed servers hosting websites, as well as hacking, email spoofing, phishing attacks, and fake website attempts.
Russian military intelligence has been accused by the United States of releasing so-called “Olympic Destroyer” malware just before the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, from which the Russian team was banned.
The malware wiped data from thousands of computers supporting the PyeongChang Olympics, rendering them inoperable.
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Other experts have suggested that the Paris Games' electronic ticketing systems, sports venue IT networks, or results systems could be targeted.
Atos, France's leading IT services and cybersecurity company, was preparing to play a key role during the Games when it suffered a severe financial crisis.
The debt-ridden group, whose shares have fallen in value by about 90% since July last year, has been the International Olympic Committee's main technology partner since 2002 and is also a key cybersecurity provider for the Paris Games.
“It's clear that we are particularly vigilant, as evidenced by our audit of the Athos systems used for tournaments and other critical systems,” Strubel said. “And we have regular meetings with the Atos team to make sure there are no issues.
“But we don't see anything at the moment, so there's no need to worry,” he added.
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