The FBI hass issued a warning on the possibility of cybercriminal attacks on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
The warning came after the FBI issued a “private industry notification” ahead of the games.
Potential attacks include distributed denial of service (DDoS), ransomware, social engineering, insider threats, or phishing campaigns.
Olympics Under Threat
The US intelligence service has already warned that the Olympics could be targeted by people who might want to exploit or cause chaos during the grand sports event.
As the FBI report said, “Malicious activity could disrupt multiple functions, including media broadcasting environments, hospitality, transit, ticketing, or security.”
The FBI, however, has yet to see if there is any real threat with damning evidence.
Despite this, they still warned the companies involved in hosting the event and maintaining the security to be on the lookout and do “best practices” in regards to digital and network environments.
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Massive Leak
It came right after the Japanese tech giant Fujitsu, a major supplier for many of this year’s Olympic games, had a massive data breach.
The attack involved several of its government and corporate citizens. It is important to note that among the clients that were hacked was the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, and the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism.
The members of the organizing committee for the Olympics were also targeted by an attack earlier in June, as reported by TechRadar.
The data leak involved names and the affiliations of each individual, amounting to about a hundred or so organizations said to be connected to the sports event.
FBI Issues ‘White Alert’
The FBI also pinpointed that the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics experienced cyber attacks by Russian cyber activists.
The hack involved phishing campaigns that affected South Korean officials, citizens, Olympic athletes, partners, and visitors.
The campaigns were using malicious mobile apps to target said individuals.
The FBI has urged providers and partners to ensure that their cyber protection is up to snuff and fully patched with the latest upgrades. All those were to prevent any type of attacks to successfully infiltrate the systems to commence malicious acts, as stated by CNN.
Multi-Factor authentication is also encouraged as there would be many people using VPNs to watch the events as they unfold.
Similar events have been happening as a recent hacker was able to steal the entire database of LimeVPN users, which was then being sold online for a profit.
Also included in the report, the FBI explicitly said that it “does not recommend paying ransoms” for anyone victimized by ransomware attacks as paying the abusers doesn’t have any guarantees that all the files will be returned without any malware hiding inside.
Paying the attackers will also encourage them to commit more atrocities to others, or yourself, if you are willing to do what they say.
Instead, they said to report the attacks immediately instead of taking matters into their own hands to prevent further damage.
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Written by Alec G.
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