Paris Olympics 2024: Cyber threats major concern for organisers

The report suggest cyber threat actors from around the world will indulge in disinformation campaigns, spread false narratives and try to gather intelligence.

Summer Olympics 2024 cyber threat | Summer Olympics 2024 cyber attack |

Summer Olympics will take place in Paris next month. (Image Source: AP)

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France is just a month away. Much like the athletes, threat actors are also gearing up for the event. Several security firms have warned organisations working for the Olympics that they should have a solid defensive mechanism.

Google says cyber espionage groups are more likely to target the upcoming Olympics for information-gathering purposes because of the sheer amount of government officials attending the event. These threat actors might also engage in disruptive and destructive operations like website defacements, DDoS attacks, deploying malware, and operational technology targeting.

Some are said to spread narratives and disinformation among audiences and might also indulge in ticket scams, theft of PII, and use Olympic-related lures in social engineering operations. The report also alerts sponsors, who might be exposed to state-sponsored actors, and destructive campaigns like extortion.

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Mandiant, now a part of Google Cloud, claims Russian threat groups will pose the biggest risk to the Summer Olympics while China, Iran and North Korea state-sponsored actors pose a low to moderate risk. The group also warned that pro-Russian Information operation campaigns, publicly known as “Doppelganger” may also target inauthentic domains and social media accounts in English, German, Fresh and Italian.

To mitigate these cyber attacks, companies should update their threat profiles and make people working on the ground more aware. While these attacks cause temporary technical disruptions, they may have a huge impact on high-profile events attended by people from different parts of the world.