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 will probably be attacked,” mentioned Mr. Regul, who leads the staff chargeable for fending off cyberthreats in opposition to this yr’s Summer time 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 laptop servers and screens with indicator lights that warn of incoming hacking assaults. Within the Paris operations heart, there’s even a pink mild to alert the workers to essentially the most extreme hazard.
Up to now, Mr. Regul mentioned, there have been no critical disruptions. However because the months till the Olympics tick all the way 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 firms and governments, although, who plan for the potential for an assault, Mr. Regul mentioned he knew precisely when to anticipate the worst.
“Not many organizations can inform you they are going to be attacked in July and August,” he mentioned.
Worries over safety at main occasions just like the Olympics have often centered on bodily threats, like terrorist assaults. However as expertise 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 international locations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran now have refined operations able to disabling not simply laptop and Wi-Fi networks but in addition digital ticketing methods, credential scanners and even the timing methods for occasions.
Fears about hacking assaults are usually not simply hypothetical. On the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, a profitable assault practically derailed the Video games earlier than they may start.
That cyberattack began on a frigid night time as followers arrived for the opening ceremony. Indicators that one thing was amiss got here suddenly. The Wi-Fi community, a necessary instrument to transmit pictures 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 point out pictures of the ceremony throughout venues went clean.
However the ceremony went forward, and so did the Video games. Dozens of cybersecurity officers labored by the night time to repel the assault and to repair the glitches, and by the subsequent morning there was little signal {that a} disaster had been averted when the primary occasions obtained underway.
Since then, the risk to the Olympics has solely grown. The cybersecurity staff on the final Summer time 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 mentioned.
Maybe to show the size of the risk, Paris 2024 cybersecurity officers use navy terminology freely. They describe “battle video games” meant to check specialists and methods, 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 alternate for a profitable ransom and protesters who wish to spotlight a particular trigger. However most consultants agree that solely nation states have the flexibility to hold out the most important assaults.
The 2018 assault in Pyeongchang was initially blamed on North Korea, South Korea’s antagonistic neighbor. However consultants, 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 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 trying to undermine the Olympics by 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 “faux 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 faux 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 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 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 time Olympics. Based on indictments of a number of Russian navy 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 electronic mail networks and databases.
Ciaran Martin, who served as the primary chief government of Britain’s nationwide cybersecurity heart, mentioned Russia’s previous conduct made it “the obvious disruptive risk” on the Paris Video games. He mentioned areas that is likely to be focused included occasion scheduling, public broadcasts and ticketing methods.
“Think about if all athletes are there on time, however the system scanning iPhones on the gate has gone down,” mentioned 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 invest about any particular nation which may goal this summer time’s Video games. However he mentioned organizers had been getting ready to counter strategies particular to international locations that signify a “sturdy cyberthreat.”
This yr, Paris organizers have been conducting what they referred to as “battle video games” at the side of the I.O.C. and companions like Atos, the Video games’ official expertise companion, to organize for assaults. In these workouts, so-called moral hackers are employed to assault methods 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 nice,” Mr. Regul mentioned.
In not less than one case, a Video games workers member paid an bill to an account after receiving an electronic mail impersonating one other committee official. Cybersecurity workers members additionally found an electronic mail account that had tried to impersonate the one assigned to the Paris 2024 chief, Tony Estanguet.
Hundreds of thousands extra makes an attempt are coming. Cyberattacks have sometimes been “weapons of mass irritation slightly than weapons of mass destruction,” mentioned Mr. Martin, the previous British cybersecurity official.
“At their worst,” he mentioned, “they’ve been weapons of mass disruption.”
