This past Wednesday, private information about international athletes leaked on the internet. This information was allegedly leaked from the World Anti-Doping Agency, and included 25 medical drug exemptions given to athletes from 8 different countries. As many of you may know, Russia was banned from competing in the Olympics in several sports this summer in Rio, due to a systematic doping scandal with Russian athletes in all sports. The hackers originally gained access through a phishing technique used against the whistle-blower that accused Russia of state-sponsored doping. There is no proof that Russia was behind the cyber-attack, but all evidence suggests it was a hacking group called “Tsar Team” or “Fancy Bear”.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/83906.html?google_editors_picks=true
I found it interesting that the article seems to imply that Russian cyber attacks are occurring to divert media attention away from media negativity surrounding Donald Trump. That seems like a strange motive to me, especially for this attack on athletes. I would agree that the attacks on the DNC e-mails and other recent leaks about Hillary Clinton are politically motivated, but this one seems like a reach.
Yeah its a bit strange that athletes who put on so much efforts are even not spared from such cyber attacks.The WADA (world anto doping agency ) has actually confirmed that Russian cyber espionage group Fancy Bear, which is also known as Tsar Team, accessed the Americans’ data through an International Olympic Committee account created for the Rio Olympics by spear phishing email accounts to obtain passwords to its database
The group released information on four American athletes — Simone Biles, Elena Delle Donne, Serena Williams and Venus Williams on their website.
Shain,
Great article. This goes to show how any organization is vulnerable to attacks such as phishing. Even though it isn’t known who did the attack it is a bit tough to not overlook Russia as a possibility based on the relationship they had with WADA and the Olympics in Rio. WADA should learn from this attack and try to train their employees for phishing attacks to prevent this from happening in the future.
Shain,
I read article that related to Fancy Bear as well. They also leaked American athletes–Simone Biles and Serena Williams’ medical records. Both reports indicated that they were doped during the Olympic game but the anti-doping agency didn’t mention it. They had to explained to the public that those medicines didn’t count for prohibited drugs. I don’t know who is right, but I still hope Olympic can be hold under a fair and honest environment.