Hibapress
French cybercrime services have identified 88 claimed digital raids that are allegedly linked to the Olympic Games, targets of web pirates who are “plotting in the shadows to ruin this global event and multiply the scams”, reported the French newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday.
According to a report drawn up by the Interior Ministry’s command in cyberspace (Comcyber-MI), the newspaper notes that of the 521 computer attacks detected at the “high end of the spectrum” between 1 December and 5 August, no fewer than 278 have been identified since the arrival of the Olympic flame in France on 7 May, including “88 claimed acts likely to be linked more or less directly to the Olympic Games”.
At the forefront of the hunt carried out alongside the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (Anssi), Comcyber-MI has valuable “sensors” on social networks to identify the demands of cybercriminals.
Among the actions claimed to have targeted the Olympic event, Comcyber-MI experts detected 33 denial of service attacks, such as DDos, which saturate a network in order to prevent it from functioning. But “none of them have damaged a strategic infrastructure,” assured Major General Christophe Husson, commander of Comcyber-MI, quoted by the daily.
In addition to 21 thefts and/or dissemination of sensitive data, the Interior Ministry’s “cyber watch” has listed 17 claimed cases of “typosquatting” around the Olympic Games, a scheme which “exploits typos in the official domain names of the Olympic Games to phish for personal data and scam Internet users”, specifies the same source.
Called paris2024.homes, Billeterie-paris2024.info, paris24tickets.co, 2024olympics.shop or Olympics-paris2024.com, these variants uncovered by Comcyber-MI watchdogs are all cloned versions of official sites stormed by Internet users.
For its part, the national gendarmerie has identified, according to a report updated last Thursday, 371 fraudulent sites claiming to sell tickets, of which 150 have been formally notified (78 have ceased their activity) and 23 have had their access blocked by suppliers, by decision of the Paris judicial court.
In the typology of digital attacks claimed against the Games, Comcyber-MI noted attacks by “ransomware”, malicious software that exploits security flaws to encrypt computer systems, before a ransom is demanded in cryptocurrency to unlock them. Hackers have also claimed “defacements” of sites (also called “smearing” or “defacing” of home pages) as well as “doxxing” aimed at making private data such as telephone numbers or addresses public.
“Opportunistic, cybercriminals are constantly adapting to current events and the Olympic fever offers a windfall effect,” comments the newspaper, which cites the spectacular cyberattack that hit, on the night of Saturday 3 to Sunday 4 August, the public institution RMN-Grand Palais (Réunion des musées nationaux), where Olympic Games events are held, and by extension 36 bookstores in other museums. A judicial investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office for “attacks on an automated data processing system”.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, nine out of ten French people have already been confronted with a situation of computer malware, notably via phishing techniques (for 70% of them), but also new threats such as “quishing”, a technique exploiting fake QR Codes to steal money.
