In his workplace on one of many higher flooring of the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizing committee, Franz Regul has little question what’s coming.
“We will probably be attacked,” stated Mr. Regul, who leads the staff accountable for fending off 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 geared up with banks of laptop servers and screens with indicator lights that warn of incoming hacking assaults. Within the Paris operations middle, there’s even a purple mild to alert the workers to probably the most extreme hazard.
Thus far, 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 danger will rise exponentially. In contrast to corporations and governments, although, who plan for the potential of an assault, Mr. Regul stated he knew precisely when to count on the worst.
“Not many organizations can let you know they are going to be attacked in July and August,” he stated.
Worries over safety at main occasions just like the Olympics have often 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. Specialists say hacking teams and international locations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran now have refined operations able to disabling not simply laptop and Wi-Fi networks but additionally digital ticketing programs, credential scanners and even the timing programs for occasions.
Fears about hacking assaults aren’t 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 . The Wi-Fi community, a vital instrument to transmit pictures and information protection, immediately went down. Concurrently, the official Olympics smartphone app — the one which held followers’ tickets and important transport info — stopped functioning, stopping some followers from getting into the stadium. Broadcast drones have been grounded and internet-linked televisions meant to point out photographs of the ceremony throughout venues went clean.
However the ceremony went forward, and so did the Video games. Dozens of cybersecurity officers labored via 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 obtained underway.
Since then, the menace to the Olympics has solely grown. The cybersecurity staff 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 occasions that quantity, Mr. Regul stated.
Maybe to show the dimensions of the menace, Paris 2024 cybersecurity officers use army terminology freely. They describe “warfare video games” meant to check specialists and programs, and consult with suggestions from “veterans of Korea” that has been built-in into their evolving defenses.
Specialists say quite a lot of actors are behind most cyberattacks, together with criminals attempting to carry knowledge in alternate for a profitable ransom and protesters who need to spotlight a particular trigger. However most specialists agree that solely nation states have the power to hold out the most important assaults.
The 2018 assault in Pyeongchang was initially blamed on North Korea, South Korea’s antagonistic neighbor. However specialists, together with companies within the U.S. and Britain, later concluded that the true perpetrator — 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 most important focus.
Russia’s staff has been barred from the Olympics following the nation’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though a small group of particular person Russians will probably 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 making an attempt to undermine the Olympics via a disinformation marketing campaign.
The Worldwide Olympic Committee has additionally pointed the finger at makes an attempt by Russian teams to break 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 put up on Telegram — the encrypted messaging and content material platform — mimicked a pretend information merchandise broadcast by the French community Canal Plus and aired false info 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 cellphone. The decision was recorded and launched earlier this month. Russia seized on Mr. Bach’s remarks to accuse Olympic officers of participating in a “conspiracy” to maintain its staff out of the Video games.
In 2019, in keeping with Microsoft, Russian state hackers attacked the pc networks of at the least 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 the US Division of Justice, operatives in that incident spoofed lodge Wi-Fi networks utilized by antidoping officers in Brazil to efficiently penetrate their group’s e-mail networks and databases.
Ciaran Martin, who served as the primary chief govt of Britain’s nationwide cybersecurity middle, stated Russia’s previous conduct made it “the obvious disruptive menace” on the Paris Video games. He stated areas that could 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 College of Authorities on the College of Oxford.
“Do you undergo with a half-empty stadium, or will we delay?” he added. “Even being put in that place the place you both must delay it or have world-class athletes within the greatest 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 season’s Video games. However he stated organizers have been making ready to counter strategies particular to international locations that characterize a “robust cyberthreat.”
This yr, Paris organizers have been conducting what they referred to as “warfare video games” at the side of the I.O.C. and companions like Atos, the Video games’ official know-how companion, to arrange 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 supplied 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 at the least one case, a Video games workers member paid an bill to an account after receiving an e-mail impersonating one other committee official. Cybersecurity workers members additionally found an e-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 sometimes been “weapons of mass irritation moderately 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.”
