The looming threat of DDoS attacks at the Olympics
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
As the Olympic Games kick off in Paris on Friday, cyber experts are on guard for what could be a tsunami of website takedowns.
Why it matters: Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are typically viewed as nuisances in the cybersecurity world — but when they're successful they can severely impact online services or live events.
The big picture: Hackers have started relying on DDoS attacks, which overload a website with malicious bot traffic, to garner attention or obfuscate larger hacking campaigns.
- Throughout the war between Israel and Palestine, hacktivists on both sides have turned to DDoS attacks to shut down media and government websites.
Between the lines: DDoS attacks can play a psychological role that unsteadies affected users or everyday citizens.
- "The recognition of how important the availability of these services is, that's what makes it an enticing attack surface," Hardik Modi, area vice president of engineering at Netscout, told Axios.
- "They recognize that the broadcaster doesn't want their systems going down at the time," Modi added. "The ticketing systems don't want to be down at that moment when 20,000 people are trying to enter a soccer stadium."
Flashback: The Olympics and other sporting events have long been ripe targets for hackers and DDoS attacks.
- In 2018, hackers successfully disrupted internet access and telecasts and shut down the official Olympics website during the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
- The 2016 Rio Olympics faced DDoS attacks that reached 540 Gbps, while the 2020 Tokyo Olympics faced roughly 450 million attacks, Cyber Magazine reports.
Zoom out: The Paris Games are coming at a time of heightened political tension — as the war between Israel and Hamas carries on, Russia continues its attacks against Ukraine, and several countries face key elections this year.
- Russia is also barred from participating in the Games under its own flag — which could further inspire Russian hacker gangs to target this summer's Games, Modi said.
The intrigue: Politically motivated hackers have already started showing signs that they'll target the Paris Games.
- Russian groups HackNeT and the People's Cyber Army launched "trial DDoS attacks" against a series of French websites, cyber firm Cyble said in a report last week.
- Targets included the sites belonging to the Grand Palais museum and the La Rochelle International Film Festival.
State of play: DDoS is just one of a long list of cybersecurity threats that experts are keeping an eye on throughout the Olympic Games.
- France's interior minister said this week that about 1,000 people have already been blocked from attending the Games over suspicions that they could be government spies.
- Russian propagandists have already been linked to a fake video circulating online showing a man purporting to be a Hamas fighter threatening the Olympics, according to NBC News.
Yes, but: France has been preparing for an onslaught of digital threats and turning to allies for assistance.
- Washington officials have been advising their French counterparts about how best to defend against incoming cyber threats.
- French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Thursday that cyberattacks against the Olympics are inevitable. "The key is to limit their impact," he told reporters at the Games, per Reuters.
