The opening ceremonies of Paris Olympics will take place in just over a week. The event is beginning to look like the banking and payment industries: expect a lot of big data, a large dose of AI, and the ever-present concerns around cybersecurity.
Security professionals prepare for a variety of scenarios that could make a global event a potential target.
The security news source Dark reading reported that Steven Baer is vice president of field sales and services for cybersecurity firm .
Baer said, “I expect to see cyberattacks that are aimed at stealing data, disrupting critical systems, extorting funds, or spreading misinformation and propaganda.” “The Games provide a great opportunity for cybercriminals to take advantage of the vulnerabilities in a high-profile global event.”
According to the technology giant Cisco, the Tokyo Olympics Games will be subjected to an estimated 450 million cyberattacks in 2021. The company is an official Paris 2024 partner and expects eight-times more cyberattacks on the Paris Games.
Cisco is responsible for the network infrastructure and cybersecurity to ensure the safety of the Games. The company announced that it was collaborating with French Cybersecurity Agency ( ANSII), and other key partners such as Atos, and orange. It has been relatively silent about its strategy, other than focusing on the communication and entertainment infrastructure to connect venues, teams and volunteers.
But that hasn’t prevented some of its competitors to weigh in.
Google Cloud and Mandiant, for example, have warned that disruptive operations may target the Games in order to cause psychological effects as well as reputational damage. These could include website defacement, DDoS, wiper malware, and operational technology targeting.
Financially motivated actors may seize this opportunity with ticket scams, theft of personal identifiable information (PII) and extortion. Financially motivated actors could take advantage of this opportunity by committing ticket scams, stealing personal identifiable information (PII), and extortion. Mandiant executives wrote on the Google Cloud Blog.
The blog stated that “Organizations participating in the Games should update the threat profile to reflect the potential new threats they may be exposed to,” “Intelligence about relevant threat actors can inform detection efforts, implement proactive security controls, conduct threats hunting within a networking, and inform cyber-risk assessments linked to Games.”
Cisco will be one of the organizations that will be organized in teams to create a state of the art cybersecurity operations center. This center will monitor and respond in real time to threats using advanced AI and Machine Learning tools. The center will be responsible for overseeing the digital safety of over 500 sites including competition venues and collectives.
The 2024 Paris Olympics organizers also enlisted ” ethical hacker” for stress tests to identify vulnerabilities before they could be exploited. The collaboration also extends to major cyber-security firms like Eviden that contribute to the deployment and security measures. These include artificial intelligence (AI), threat detection systems, and other security measures.
AI will play a significant role in the Olympics, from fraud detection to defense. Blackbird.AI’s Constellation platform is a major component of the cybersecurity measures. It is an AI-based narrative system designed to detect and analyze disinformation narratives. This platform can monitor conversations online across multiple platforms, such as the dark web, news outlets and social media, in more than 25 languages.
According to a post posted on the Blackbird website, the Games were already a target. The French government’s technical service, Viginum, which is responsible for digital vigilance and protection from foreign interference, reported on Nov. 13 that it suspected Azerbaijani threat actors to have carried out a campaign of disinformation aimed at France’s ability to host Games.
This operation is said to have started in July, a year prior to the event. It was allegedly launched amid increased diplomatic tensions between Paris & Baku due to the French government’s open support for Armenia in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
It’s a model for the types of attacks and misinformation AI can generate, on the one hand, and the types of attacks it can stop, on the other.
In a recent post by security consulting firm , Teneo, the company stated that organizations should monitor and collaborate with social networking platforms to detect and report false information.
“While the cyberattack threats mentioned above are the most common and expected, it does not exclude the possibility of a cyberattack that could cause panic, injury, or even death,” the company said. “Awareness of the threat landscape, and vigilance by all while at the Games will help keep the primary goal: sports.”