In his workplace on one of many higher flooring of the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizing committee, Franz Regul has little doubt what’s coming.
“We can be attacked,” stated Mr. Regul, who leads the group answerable for avoiding cyberthreats in opposition to this yr’s Summer season Video games in Paris.
Corporations and governments world wide now all have groups like Mr. Regul’s that function in spartan rooms outfitted with banks of pc servers and screens with indicator lights that warn of incoming hacking assaults. Within the Paris operations heart, there may be even a pink gentle to alert the employees to essentially the most extreme hazard.
To date, Mr. Regul stated, there have been no critical disruptions. However because the months till the Olympics tick right down to weeks after which days and hours, he is aware of the variety of hacking makes an attempt and the extent of threat will rise exponentially. In contrast to corporations and governments, although, who plan for the opportunity of an assault, Mr. Regul stated he knew precisely when to count on the worst.
“Not many organizations can inform you they are going to be attacked in July and August,” he stated.
Worries over safety at main occasions just like the Olympics have normally targeted on bodily threats, like terrorist assaults. However as know-how performs a rising function within the Video games rollout, Olympic organizers more and more view cyberattacks as a extra fixed hazard.
The threats are manifold. Consultants say hacking teams and nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran now have refined operations able to disabling not simply pc and Wi-Fi networks but additionally digital ticketing programs, credential scanners and even the timing programs for occasions.
Fears about hacking assaults usually are not simply hypothetical. On the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, a profitable assault practically derailed the Video games earlier than they might start.
That cyberattack began on a frigid evening as followers arrived for the opening ceremony. Indicators that one thing was amiss got here unexpectedly. The Wi-Fi community, a necessary software to transmit images and information protection, all of the sudden went down. Concurrently, the official Olympics smartphone app — the one which held followers’ tickets and important transport data — stopped functioning, stopping some followers from coming into the stadium. Broadcast drones had been grounded and internet-linked televisions meant to indicate photos of the ceremony throughout venues went clean.
However the ceremony went forward, and so did the Video games. Dozens of cybersecurity officers labored by means of the evening to repel the assault and to repair the glitches, and by the following morning there was little signal {that a} disaster had been averted when the primary occasions received underway.
Since then, the risk to the Olympics has solely grown. The cybersecurity group on the final Summer season Video games, in Tokyo in 2021, reported that it confronted 450 million tried “safety occasions.” Paris expects to face eight to 12 instances that quantity, Mr. Regul stated.
Maybe to reveal the dimensions of the risk, Paris 2024 cybersecurity officers use army terminology freely. They describe “conflict video games” meant to check specialists and programs, and discuss with suggestions from “veterans of Korea” that has been built-in into their evolving defenses.
Consultants say a wide range of actors are behind most cyberattacks, together with criminals attempting to carry knowledge in trade for a profitable ransom and protesters who wish to spotlight a particular trigger. However most specialists agree that solely nation states have the flexibility to hold out the largest assaults.
The 2018 assault in Pyeongchang was initially blamed on North Korea, South Korea’s antagonistic neighbor. However specialists, together with businesses within the U.S. and Britain, later concluded that the true offender — now extensively accepted to be Russia — intentionally used methods designed to pin the blame on another person.
This yr, Russia is as soon as once more the largest focus.
Russia’s group has been barred from the Olympics following the nation’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though a small group of particular person Russians can be permitted to compete as impartial athletes. France’s relationship with Russia has soured a lot that President Emmanuel Macron just lately accused Moscow of trying to undermine the Olympics by means of a disinformation marketing campaign.
The Worldwide Olympic Committee has additionally pointed the finger at makes an attempt by Russian teams to wreck the Video games. In November, the I.O.C. issued an uncommon assertion saying it had been focused by defamatory “pretend information posts” after a documentary that includes an A.I.-generated voice-over purporting to be the actor Tom Cruise appeared on YouTube.
Later, a separate publish on Telegram — the encrypted messaging and content material platform — mimicked a pretend information merchandise broadcast by the French community Canal Plus and aired false data that the I.O.C. was planning to bar Israeli and Palestinian groups from the Paris Olympics.
Earlier this yr, Russian pranksters — impersonating a senior African official — managed to get Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president, on the telephone. The decision was recorded and launched earlier this month. Russia seized on Mr. Bach’s remarks to accuse Olympic officers of partaking in a “conspiracy” to maintain its group out of the Video games.
In 2019, in keeping with Microsoft, Russian state hackers attacked the pc networks of not less than 16 nationwide and worldwide sports activities and antidoping organizations, together with the World Anti-Doping Company, which on the time was poised to announce punishments in opposition to Russia associated to its state-backed doping program.
Three years earlier, Russia had focused antidoping officers on the Rio de Janeiro Summer season Olympics. In keeping with indictments of a number of Russian army intelligence officers filed by america Division of Justice, operatives in that incident spoofed resort Wi-Fi networks utilized by antidoping officers in Brazil to efficiently penetrate their group’s electronic mail networks and databases.
Ciaran Martin, who served as the primary chief government of Britain’s nationwide cybersecurity heart, stated Russia’s previous conduct made it “the obvious disruptive risk” on the Paris Video games. He stated areas that is likely to be focused included occasion scheduling, public broadcasts and ticketing programs.
“Think about if all athletes are there on time, however the system scanning iPhones on the gate has gone down,” stated Mr. Martin, who’s now a professor on the Blavatnik Faculty of Authorities on the College of Oxford.
“Do you undergo with a half-empty stadium, or can we delay?” he added. “Even being put in that place the place you both should delay it or have world-class athletes within the largest occasion of their lives performing in entrance of a half-empty stadium — that’s completely a failure.”
Mr. Regul, the Paris cybersecurity head, declined to take a position about any particular nation which may goal this summer time’s Video games. However he stated organizers had been getting ready to counter strategies particular to nations that characterize a “sturdy cyberthreat.”
This yr, Paris organizers have been conducting what they known as “conflict video games” at the side of the I.O.C. and companions like Atos, the Video games’ official know-how associate, to organize for assaults. In these workout routines, so-called moral hackers are employed to assault programs in place for the Video games, and “bug bounties” are provided to those that uncover vulnerabilities.
Hackers have beforehand focused sports activities organizations with malicious emails, fictional personas, stolen passwords and malware. Since final yr, new hires on the Paris organizing committee have undergone coaching to identify phishing scams.
“Not everybody is sweet,” Mr. Regul stated.
In not less than one case, a Video games employees member paid an bill to an account after receiving an electronic mail impersonating one other committee official. Cybersecurity employees members additionally found an electronic mail account that had tried to impersonate the one assigned to the Paris 2024 chief, Tony Estanguet.
Tens of millions extra makes an attempt are coming. Cyberattacks have usually been “weapons of mass irritation fairly than weapons of mass destruction,” stated Mr. Martin, the previous British cybersecurity official.
“At their worst,” he stated, “they’ve been weapons of mass disruption.”
