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Tech galore at Olympic Games as cyber criminals lurk

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb news editor.
Johannesburg, 26 Jul 2024
Major sporting events like the Olympics attract billions of viewers and are prime opportunities for cyber criminals.
Major sporting events like the Olympics attract billions of viewers and are prime opportunities for cyber criminals.

While organisers of the 2024 Summer Olympics, officially branded as Paris 2024, have boosted the use of technology to create an enjoyable event and experience, cyber criminals are also using the popularity of the games to target unsuspecting audiences, as well as to abuse athletes on social media.

The Games will be officially opening along the River Seine on Friday, 26 July, and will close on Sunday, 11 August.

The high-tech opening ceremony will see Samsung equip Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphones on each country’s boat during the opening ceremony on the River Seine to offer a closer connection with this first-of-its-kind celebration by sharing on-board footage via a 5G network.

In a ground-breaking initiative, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched the Olympic AI Agenda in April 2024, setting out the envisioned impact that AI can deliver for sport.

According to the IOC, the Paris Games will witness the first examples of implementation.

“The IOC will use AI at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 in different areas. A very important one is safeguarding athletes from cyber abuse, since we expect about half a billion social media posts during these Games,” says Thomas Bach, IOC president.

“AI will also be used to create highlights videos in multiple formats and languages during these Games. We are also using AI to make the Olympic Games more sustainable through a very sophisticated first-ever data capture and energy management system. AI is also opening up new ways for talent identification, and this project will be launched by us globally in 2025 to live up to the commitment we made that AI in sport must be accessible to everybody.”

“We will see some pioneering concepts at Paris 2024. We are taking a measured approach for now to test and evaluate how AI can be used to enhance the Olympic Games and have them future-ready,” adds Ilario Corna, IOC’s chief technology officer.

The AI-powered monitoring system designed to protect athletes from online abuse was already announced earlier this year by the IOC. It will use AI to monitor hundreds of thousands of social media accounts and flag abusive messages for intervention by the relevant platforms.

In addition, says Corna, athletes, who are at the heart of the Olympic Games, will also be able to test drive a new chat service that the IOC is providing in partnership with Intel.

He adds: “For accredited athletes at the Games, the service is designed to provide easy and quick answers to frequently asked questions on topics such as social media guidelines, anti-doping rules, and Rule 50 regulations.

“We started gathering various operational data as far back as 2020, to look at how we can make the management of the Olympic Games more efficient. For planning, we are now working with our partner Intel using the concept of digital twinning, or digital representations of venues, so we can foresee, for example, where we would need power, where we would need to place cameras, and if there could be any accessibility issues – all without needing to be on site every time. Using these digital twins of the Games venues, we can change the way we organise the Games.”

Weak WiFi hotspots

While the stage is set for the Games with all the digital technologies in place, cyber security firms are warning that bad actors are on the prowl.

Kaspersky experts have analysed nearly 25 000 free WiFi spots in Paris prior to the opening of the Games, and the firm says this has revealed that almost 25% of these networks had weak or no encryption, making users vulnerable to personal and banking data theft.

According to the cyber security company, just 6% of the networks employ the latest WPA3 security protocol.

Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) researchers have mapped and assessed the security of the open WiFi networks that visitors might encounter.

The researchers analysed 47 891 signal records across popular locations and Olympic venues in Paris, identifying 24 766 unique WiFi access points. They found that a quarter (25%) of these networks had serious security weaknesses, such as weak or non-existent encryption, making them vulnerable to interception, decryption, or cracking attacks.

Additionally, almost one-in-five (20%) were configured with WiFi Protected Set-up (WSP), an outdated and easily compromised algorithm, rendering them highly susceptible to WPS attacks that could result in data loss, says Kaspersky.

“Like the sportspeople training for the summer of sport in France, cyber criminals have also prepared an unsavoury welcome for the millions of people heading for Paris hotels, fan zones and events,” says Amin Hasbini, director of META Research Centre, GReAT at Kaspersky.

“They might set up fake access points or compromise legitimate networks to intercept and manipulate data transfers. Open and misconfigured WiFi networks are particularly attractive to criminals, as they enable the theft of passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive user data.”

High-stakes cyber target

Another cyber security firm FortiGuard warns that major sporting events like the Olympics attract billions of viewers and are prime opportunities for cyber criminals.

FortiGuard points out that over the past decade, cyber attacks targeting major events have surged, increasing from 212 million documented attacks at the London 2012 Games to 4.4 billion at the Tokyo 2020 Games.

It notes that these attacks often have direct financial motives, such as scams, digital fraud, or data theft from attendees, viewers, and sponsors.

With the world’s media focused on the event, criminals with a political agenda are looking for a large audience for their message by disrupting a significant site or knocking critical services offline, the firm adds.

FortiGuard Labs has observed a significant increase in resources being gathered for the Paris Olympic Games, especially those targeting French-speaking users, French government agencies and businesses, and French infrastructure providers.

“Beginning the second half of 2023, we saw a surge in darknet activity targeting France. This 80% to 90% increase has remained consistent across 2H 2023 and 1H 2024. The prevalence and sophistication of these threats are a testament to cybercriminals’ planning and execution, with the dark web serving as a hub for their activities,” it notes.

“The Paris Olympics 2024 is a high-stakes cyber threat target, drawing attention from cyber criminals, hacktivists, and state-sponsored actors. Cyber criminals are leveraging phishing scams and fraudulent schemes to exploit unsuspecting participants and spectators. Fake ticketing platforms, fraudulent merchandise, and identity theft tactics threaten financial loss and undermine public trust in event-related transactions.

“We anticipate that hacktivist groups will focus on entities associated with the Paris Olympics to disrupt the event, targeting infrastructure, media channels, and affiliated organisations to disrupt event proceedings, undermine credibility, and amplify their messages on a global stage,” it concludes.

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