Plaintext: Play Ball! Cybersecurity in Sports
Welcome to Dark Reading in Plaintext, brought to your inbox this week by SANS Institute . In this issue of Plaintext, we shift to sports. Between online ticket sales, smart stadium infrastructure, broadcast rights, and a complex web of suppliers and partners — the potential attack surface is huge. Whether we are talking about individual sporting teams or international events, cybersecurity professionals have to keep their eye on the ball. If you enjoy Plaintext, please share with friends and colleagues !
Cyber at Fenway. In response to the Houston Astros hack 10 years ago, Major League Baseball set out to build a core cybersecurity competency that all 30 teams could make use of; and the Boston Red Sox was an early adopter . The 9-time World Series winner was the first team to hire a full-time cybersecurity person on staff, and one of the first three teams to actually sign up for the formal MLB cyber program.
"Our ownership group in particular has been very supportive of everything that is that we've wanted to do," says Randy George, vice president of technology operations and information security at the Red Sox. And those investments have been myriad, lately revolving around a migration to the cloud and upgrading Fenway to a smart stadium powered by IoT. Ai is next: "We have this venue, Fenway Park, with 30,000 people running all over the place. We want to leverage AI to identify threats to the venue, track children while they're traversing the stadium, and to help secure and improve the fan experience. There are so many opportunities, but we need to have a policy framework for those AI tools."
"In fact, I've never I've never got the answer of no when it comes to a security investment." Randy George, Boston Red Sox
The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center estimated last year that 70% of sports organizations experience at least one cyberattack per year, making it even more imperative that sports teams, major leagues, global sporting associations, and entertainment venues pay attention to their defenses. There is a lot of data to secure — both operations (including information about personnel and athletes) and ticket sales — as well as physical infrastructure for the venue . There is a veritable army of suppliers and contractors that support and broadcast the event. All of these are potential weak spots . A China-linked threat actor compromised a major communications provider for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar — an incident which could have completely disrupted soccer tournament coverage . The National Football League deals with AI-enabled phishing attacks — and took part in a tabletop exercise last fall to assess threats to the Super Bowl .
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Paris Olympics Already Facing Threats. Speaking of sports, attackers have already set their sights on the 2024 Paris Olympics . “Mandiant assesses with high confidence that the Paris Olympics faces an elevated risk of cyber threat activity, including cyber espionage, disruptive and destructive operations, financially-motivated activity, hacktivism, and information operations.” The Olympic games will go from July 26 to Aug 11 and the Paralympics will go from Aug 28 to Sept 8. Russian threat groups pose the highest risk . The Tom Cruise deepfake is just one of many.
Perhaps the Paris Olympics is better prepared for the cyber threats facing the Games than it has been for previous Games . The Paris 2024 committee has been working with the French national agency for information security (ANSSI) and companies such as Cisco to shore up defenses , conduct penetration tests to find weaknesses, offering bug bounties for vulnerabilities that could be exploited. The IOC piloted an AI program to identify and respond proactively to online abuse directed towards athletes and also engaged a “data science company” to provide athletes with cyber abuse protection service . “The Games are facing an unprecedented level of threat, but we’ve also done an unprecedented amount of preparation work so I think we’re a step ahead of the attackers,” Vincent Strubel, the director general of ANSSI, told Reuters .
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