450 million cyberattacks were attempted on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games infrastructure

The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation has revealed that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics infrastructure received 450 million attempted cyberattacks. According to NTT, the attack types included Emotet malware, email phishing and fake websites that mimicked the official sites for the Games.

NTT adds that it successfully blocked the attacks with the help of 200 cybersecurity experts who had undergone rigorous training and simulations of potential attacks before the Games. These threats were not unexpected; the company had forecast ransomware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks plus attacks against the critical infrastructure, from state-sponsored hackers.

NTT was not the only company to predict the threats, however. The FBI also released a private alert ahead of the competition, encouraging those working with the 2020 Games to prepare themselves for potential attacks. The FBI report suggested that the attacks could include "threats to block or disrupt live broadcasts of the event, steal and possibly hack and leak or hold hostage sensitive data, or impact public or private digital infrastructure supporting the Olympics".

Additionally, the FBI reminded readers of the report about the cyberattacks that occurred at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, during which Russian hackers released malware called Olympic Destroyer. The malware affected the opening ceremony, causing issues with the venue Wi-Fi, the app and ticketing, to name but a few. The 2018 Games faced around 600 million cyberattacks in total.

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