- Jan 16, 2014
- 452
If you've read anything about the Sochi Olympics over the last few days, there's as much a chance that it was about broken and unfinished infrastructure as actual athletics. And now comes word that hackers are having a field day with unsuspecting Sochi visitors.
According to an NBC News report, unprepared Olympics attendees are being hacked the second they fire up their electronic devices.
NBC reporter Richard Engel worked with a security expert to set up two test computers in order to see just how quickly he'd be attacked when logging onto Russian networks. But, he reported, when sitting down at a cafe with the expert, "before we even finished our coffee" the bad actors had hit, downloading malware and "stealing my information and giving hackers the option to tap or even record my phone calls."
Once the two test computers went online, the hacking happened just as fast, Engel said. It took "less than 1 minute [for hackers] to pounce, and in less than 24 hours, they had broken into both of my computers."
Engel said that the respected professionals at Kaspersky Lab had been tasked with providing computer security at Sochi, but he reported that a Kaspersky representative said there are simply going to be too many devices brought to the Olympics and that everyone is subject to attack.
As Engel put it, athletes and other visitors to Sochi are "entering a minefield the instant they log on to the Internet."
