PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Games (POCOG) confirmed that the Games had fallen victim to a cyber attack during Friday’s opening ceremony.
The Games’ systems, which include the internet protocol televisions (IPTVs) at the Main Press Centre and television services, were affected by the hack. The attack was didn't compromised any critical part of their operations as POCOG said that it shut down the servers to prevent further damage.
“Maintaining secure operations is our purpose,” said International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman Mark Adams. "We are making sure our systems are secure and they are secure."
The website, which was shut down during the opening ceremony on Friday, was switched back on at around 8am local time on Saturday.
McAfee Advanced Threat Research senior analyst Ryan Sherstobitoff, said that his teams found a variant of malicious documents targeting the Winter Games a few days prior to the opening ceremonies.
It "contained the same metadata properties as those related to Operation GoldDragon, and sought to gain persistence on systems owned by organisations involved with the Winter Games," said Sherstobitoff in a statement. "It is clear attacks are ongoing and are likely to continue throughout the duration of the games. What is yet to be determined is if actors are working simply to gain disruption, or if their motives are greater."
The attack has been dubbed "Operation PowerShell Olympics" by the researchers who discovered it.
The Winter Games are being staged only 80km from the North Korean border. Both North and South Korea had their teams marched together at the opening ceremony for the first time since 2006.
