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Like the rest of the world, threat actors set eyes on Paris during its 2024 Olympic Games, with French cyber authorities revealing that the number of cyber attacks reported during the games was over 140.
According to media reports, From 26 July to 11 August, the dates bookending the Olympics, French government cyber security agency ANSSI recorded 141 cyber incidents, 119 being low-impact “security events”, and 22 being incidents in which threat actors successfully breached the information systems of a victim.
A third of these incidents were downtime events, over half of which were caused by denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, while the remaining attacks were attempts at system breaches and data theft, some of which were successful.
These victims were largely related to the operation of the games, including transport and telco infrastructure, sports and government agencies.
“All the cyber events that occurred during this period were generally characterised by their low impact,” said the agency.
A rise in malicious cyber activity was expected by the Olympic host nation, with France bolstering its security months prior to the games.
France unveiled its dedicated cyber crime agency at the beginning of the year, after Interpol issued a stark warning of possible cyber threats to the 2024 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 in 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.”
The French Anti-Cybercrime Office (OFAC), which operates under the auspices of the National Directorate of the Judicial Police, was unveiled in January with the goal of dealing with online fraud and assisting in information sharing between French authorities and international law enforcement.
“OFAC has four missions: investigate, educate, detect and inform,” said OFAC head Nicolas Guidoux 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.”
By the time it was unveiled, OFAC already had 180 staff and had assisted in the arrest of a member of the Hive ransomware group.
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