They had disappeared, they resurface. Russian hackers from the Fancy Bear group, known in the sports movement for having repeatedly hacked the accounts of international organizations, have struck again. They would have done it with force and precision.
The information is trustworthy. It comes from Tom Burt, one of the vice-presidents of Microsoft, in charge in particular of security issues. The American leader assured on his blog that the cyberattacks launched from Russia targeted several major players in the Olympic movement and the fight against doping.
According to Tom Burt, the hacker group, named Strontium, Fancy Bear, or APT28, is linked to the Russian government. It would have targeted at least 16 sports organizations, national and international, located on three continents.
In itself, nothing very new. The Russian group has already struck. He will do it again. But, disturbingly, his attacks began on September 16, 2019, just a few days before the revelation of a WADA report revealing numerous anomalies in the analysis data taken from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory.
At this stage, it is premature to establish a link between the two cases. But the Fancy Bears' offensive in the international sports movement comes at a bad time for Russia, suspected of having manipulated a large number of data to cover, once again, cases of doping.
According to Microsoft, several cyberattacks have reached their targets, but the majority of them have failed. The American group explains that it has informed its customers.
Known to computer security services under a host of different names, including Sofancy and Pawn Storm, the Russian hacker group is closely linked, according to the security company CrowdStrike, to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
His first attacks in sport date back to 2016 and 2018. They were analyzed as a form of retaliation for the suspension of Russian athletics from the Rio 2016 Games, then of its entire delegation at the Winter Games in PyeongChang 2018.
The Fancy Bears first attacked the computers of the World Anti-Doping Agency, before attacking those of the IOC and the IAAF. The Russian group had also targeted several athletes, including Serena Williams, Simone Biles and Bradley Wiggins.
Last August, Microsoft shut down 84 fake websites suspected of being linked to Russian hackers. The American giant had suggested that hackers were preparing cyberattacks against political groups in the United States.
At the IOC, a spokesperson soberly explained that it was not the practice of the Olympic organization to comment on cases of cyberattacks. Silence, then. Same very wait-and-see position at WADA, where the official version is content to assure that there is at this stage no proof of a violation of the agency's computer systems. Without a doubt. But Russian sport would have done well without such publicity.
