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Interpol expects cyber attacks to be the “greatest enduring or constant threat” to the Paris Olympics.
France’s new dedicated cyber crime agency is looking to gear up its operations ahead of the upcoming Summer Olympics.
The new French Anti-Cybercrime Office – or OFAC – will operate under the auspices of the National Directorate of the Judicial Police and recently moved to new digs in Nanterre, in Paris’ western suburbs.
OFAC has 180 staff and has already assisted in the arrest of a member of the Hive ransomware group.
Nicolas Guidoux, the head of the new unit, took to X (formerly Twitter) to map out the unit’s mission statement.
“OFAC has four missions: investigate, educate, detect and inform,” Guidoux said earlier in January. “The role of OFAC as a police service is to identify cyber crime perpetrators, arrest them, and to refer them to justice, as well as to prevent cyber criminals from being able to profit from the fruit of their actions.”
The creation of the new office – which was only stood up in December 2023 – comes as Interpol has issued a stark warning over possible cyber threats to the next Olympics.
“I think cyber will be the greatest enduring or constant threat,” Stephen Kavanagh, executive director of police services at Interpol, told Agence France-Presse on 19 January. “Cyber crime is everywhere all the time, whether that’s disruption of ticket purchase, whether it’s the systems inside an event, whether it’s the transport systems.”
Japanese telco NTT reported there were 450 million cyber attacks launched against the last Games’ infrastructure in 2021 in Tokyo.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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