Russian doping scandal whistleblower's Wada account hacked
Athlete Yuliya Stepanova's location revealed in data breach
Yuliya Stepanova, the Russian athlete who blew the lid on her country's doping practices, has had her details exposed in a hack.
The runner is in hiding after reporting the state-sponsored doping practices of Russia to the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), which led to the country's athletes facing a blanket ban at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
However, it now seems her Anti-Doping Administration & Management System (ADAMS) account, which is owned and operated by Wada, has been subject to a hack.
ADAMS lets athletes enter information about their whereabouts to help Wada coordinate testing. The apparently successful attack on her account, therefore, means the hacker has information on her current, or most recent, location.
In a statement, Wada said: "Through regular security monitoring of ADAMS, the agency noted that someone, other than Ms Stepanova, had accessed her account."
"A subsequent investigation allowed the agency to determine that no other athlete accounts on ADAMS have been accessed," the organisation added, indicating this was a highly-targeted attack.
Ed Macnair, CEO of cloud security specialists CensorNet, told IT Pro: "It's good to see Wada was monitoring the account of an athlete in such a sensitive position, locking it down upon discovering the bogus login. Despite so many portals and cloud applications being used in the enterprise nowadays, they are often overlooked as a threat vector, so it is crucial to have visibility of unwarranted incursions."
"In general, the traditional password and username method used to login to such systems needs to be overhauled. Many of the biggest companies in the world who we trust with highly confidential information are still using an approach developed way too long ago. Stock passwords are inherently flawed and organisations need to take a far more intelligent approach to authentication in today's complex threat environment."
Main Image Credit: Erik van Leeuwen, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.
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