While most observers believe that the World Cup in Russia took place without major incidents, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to focus on Russian services. During the competition for the first time VAR technology was used to ensure best judgments.
According to Russian President, during the competition period, as reported by western media, authorities have identified and stopped a little over 25 million computer attacks. The president also said that these attacks “were linked to the World Cup”, a way to show that for the Russians the threat has been considerably increased compared to the usual time before the competitions.
Nevertheless, it will be vital to be satisfied with this number a little unrealistic. Vladimir Putin has indeed announced this figure, without giving details on the exact nature of the attacks in these 25 million. And the question is: what’s behind this number? phishing campaigns? Scams? Or attack directly on the infrastructure of the World Cup? Hard to say, but you can argue that these 25 million attacks are certainly not all exact cyber attacks.
Vladimir Putin knows neither the origin nor the cyber attacks. The president likes to recall the efforts Russia has made to ensure the race for the World Cup. However, in many world important events, such cyber attacks are very common so the world cup is not an exception.
In recent years, many sports events have been disrupted by computer attacks. We can mention the Olympic Winter Games in Korea: The infrastructure was attacked by a wiper that was supposed to cause system malfunctions. similar to denial of attack (DOS) or its distributed form (DDOS).
In the past, cyber attackers had hacked and distributed anti-doping material to several Olympic athletes. Cyber criminals close to the Russian secret service have been accused by Western governments of initiating these destabilizing operations, but the Russian officials have consistently denied having caused these attacks.
