Winter Olympics cyberattacks meant to ‘send a message’

Security researchers say they’ve uncovered a set of hacking tools that were likely used to target and disrupt the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics over the weekend. On Friday, the official 2018 Winter Olympics website went down for several hours causing a disruption to ticket sales and downloads during the opening ceremony. Localized Wi-Fi networks surrounding the games in South Korea also became temporarily unavailable in the preceding hours. Olympics officials confirmed on Sunday that a cyberattack had hit their systems, but provided few details about the incident. New research published Monday by multiple cybersecurity firms now suggests that a hacking group equipped with “destructive” wiper malware, dubbed “Olympic Destroyer,” may have been behind the disturbance. While various experts have already begun to assess the parties responsible Olympic Destroyer — blaming nondescript hackers linked to either North Korea, China or Russia — the technical evidence to support such a conclusion is sparse. It’s notoriously difficult […]

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