Olympic IT infrastructure holds off hackers

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Despite numerous attempts by cybercriminals to hijack this year’s Olympics, the Games appear to have passed without any major security breaches.

Information security specialists uncovered numerous attempts to exploit both interest in the Olympics, and in the pro-Tibet protests, to distribute malware.

Atos Origin, the Games’ main IT supplier, said it had monitored and reviewed over 12 million IT security events each day to detect any potential security risks. From these, less than 100 were identified as real issues and these were resolved, the contractor said.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security firm, Sophos told IT PRO the lack of incidents surrounding the Games’ IT systems was “terrific” and “how it should be.”

He added: “We did see some attempts to use the Olympic theme to defraud ordinary users of sensitive information or infect their computers with malware, but that’s the type of thing you’d expect to see around any major, international event. The Games’ systems themselves did a terrific job.”

According to Atos Origin, systems for the 2008 Beijing event securely processed 80 per cent more competition data for media and news agencies worldwide than during the 2004 Athens games.

It also enabled almost 50 per cent more stories to be published each day in English by the Olympic News Service – totalling an average of 500 stories a day – than in 2004.

Systems also supported around 30 per cent more hits on the ‘INFO2008’ intranet for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, which averaged out at around 1.2 million hits each day.

Phil Codling, a principal analyst in the IT services practice at research firm Ovum, said it was important to Atos Origin that its handling of the Olympic IT infrastructure went smoothly. "And as far as I've seen, everything's gone well," he said.

"The Olympics is an important contract for Atos, not just because they [the Games] have such a high profile," he added. "Beijing was also a great opportunity for Atos to raise its profile in China, where it would like to grow its business."

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