Faster, Higher, Stronger—Olympic Security Risks

The 2012 Summertime Olympic Games in London, England (July 27 to August 12) will mark the tertiary time the city has hosted this event. When previous London Olympics were held in 1908 and 1948, cyberattacks weren’t even the stuff of science fiction. This time around, they are a real concern. Hackers are already taking advantage of the huge explosion in search engine requests, ticket sales, online streaming, and social media postings that volition occur as a result of this 17-day sports upshot.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were the target of most 12 million cybersecurity incidents per day. In February, we blogged about Olympic ticket scams associated with the 2012 London games, but that was only the first. Ticket scams are a major security business due to the money involved; iv years ago, tickets to the Beijing Opening Anniversary were sold on the black marketplace for $26,000 each.

The U.Yard. government is preparing for all kinds of attacks, from actual terrorism to computer threats. Chiffonier Part minister Francis Maude said, “We have rightly been preparing for some fourth dimension–a dedicated unit will help guard the London Olympics against cyberattacks. We are determined to have a safe and secure Games.” He added that an essential chemical element of security is keeping updated on emerging threats: “Our responses have to be fast and flexible. What works one day is unlikely to piece of work a matter of months or fifty-fifty weeks after.”

The effect has been chosen “the beginning social Olympics,” and organizers anticipate social media volition exist more important than ever, which means online security is more of a concern than always. Records volition be broken non only on the track and in pools, but also in internet traffic. Ofcom, the U.K. telecom regulator, anticipates the wireless spectrum demand to double in London during the games.  Websense® will help administrators control bandwidth consumption past using our Avant-garde Nomenclature Engine™ (ACE) to allocate streaming media and internet video from the Olympics into the Special Eventscategory.

Games organizers take ready up an Olympic Athletes’ Hub to encourage connection among competitors and fans, only at the same time, have imposed some very strict limits on how they can utilise social media. We first heard back in Jan from a friend who is one of the seventy,000 Games Makers volunteers that she and her colleagues were warned their social media usemight compromise the reputation and security of the effect.

Ticket purchasers are also beingness told that they may not “license, broadcast or publish video and/or audio recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes nether any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or brand them available to 3rd parties for commercial purposes.”

Whether any of this volition or even can be enforced remains to be seen. The official IOC guidelines employ (in theory) only to “participants and other accredited persons,” only there is a great bargain of confusion and concern about what can and can’t be shared, and by whom.  U.1000. legal consultant Rachel Boothroyd provides a useful overview, guidelines, and summaryprimarily for social media professionals.

Anyone can exist targeted by email scams abusing the “London 2012” proper name, challenge the recipient has won tickets or a large corporeality of money from a nonexistent “Olympics lottery.” The recipient is given a merits number and told to contact a claim agent—and of class, advised to continue the data confidential until the prize is claimed, to avoid spreading the word well-nigh the scam. As we accept seen in many previous email scams, victims are told they have to make some kind of payment to merits their prize. An official lottery volition pay you lot right abroad and will not crave payment to release your winnings. E-mail scams often give themselves away through poor use of English, misspellings, U.K. telephone numbers starting with 070, and personal email accounts like Gmail or Hotmail accounts.

Common sense may continue you rubber in most situations, but hackers and spammers are quickly coming up with new ideas on how to attract and have advantage of new victims.

Websense is protecting our customers from scams and other security problems by ACE, our Avant-garde Nomenclature Engine.