The grand Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang is an opportunity for athletes from around the globe to show off their skills and bring honor to their countries. For viewers, it is a privilege to witness the great dedication and love for sport, while also cheering up for participants from their region. The opening ceremony of every Olympics is a beautiful event, setting the mood for the entire game. Such a joyous event was a perfect occasion for hackers to have some fun.
Cyber attack caused the official website and Wi-Fi to go down right before the opening ceremony
On Sunday, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics organizing committee confirmed that a malware attack had caused problems before and during the opening ceremony. Right before the show was about to start, the official website for the Winter Games was no longer available.
Due to this malfunction, visitors from all over the world did not have a chance to print their tickets or get more information about the opening. In addition to this, the Wi-Fi also went down. Hackers obviously were skilled and had knowledge about the Olympic networks’ structure. The website was only recovered on Saturday: this means that the damage was difficult to reverse.
According to Cisco Talos Intelligence researchers Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres, the attackers did not take a shot in the dark: they were well prepared to cause chaos and disruption. Hackers were aware of the olympic Game infrastructure (username, domain name, server name, password).
The malicious payload used this information in order to spread the malware across the network. Researchers also made remarks that this specific attack had used the same wiping-techniques as Bad Rabbit and NotPetya.
McAfee Advanced Threat Research senior analyst Ryan Sherstobitoff reported to have found malicious documents, targeting the Winter Games, few days before the opening ceremony was scheduled to take place. McAfee has also reported that hackers are targeting the partners of Winter Olympics as well. The detected malware samples have been singled out for their originality, as such attacks had never been detected in the wild.
More attacks expected
Since Pyeongchang Winter Olympics began with a cyber attack, it is expected that hackers won’t back down so easily. Similar attacks might take place throughout the game, but we hope that the organizing committee will take all of the necessary precautions to protect its servers from malfunctioning.
As for the culprits of this attack, the coast appears to be clear at the moment. Researchers can only speculate who might have been behind this attack. However, this was definitely not an amateur attack: hackers had intimate information which was not easy to obtain. Let’s hope that no more distractions from the original purpose of the Winter Olympics are going to disturb us.
Source: cnet.com.
