Two days ahead of the beginning of the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian resort city of Sochi, mass cyberattacks targeting the Olympics' information resources were registered, and they were carried out with the help of a global IT botnet operated from the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Malaysia, Nikolai Murashov, deputy director of the Russian National Cyberthreat Response Center, said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th December, 2018) Two days ahead of the beginning of the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian resort city of Sochi, mass cyberattacks targeting the Olympics' information resources were registered, and they were carried out with the help of a global IT botnet operated from the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Malaysia, Nikolai Murashov, deputy director of the Russian National Cyberthreat Response Center, said on Tuesday.
"Before the opening of the Olympics, on early morning of February 5, 2014, mass distributed cyberattacks began, and they targeted the Olympics' official and a range of non-official information resources," Murashov said at a briefing.
"The analysis of the malicious attacks has showed that they were carried out with the help of seized computers. The botnet, created by the attackers, included over 100,000 computers located literally in every corner of the world," Murashov said.
He specified that Russian experts had managed to establish, with assistance of their foreign colleagues, that centers operating the bothet had been located in the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Malaysia.
Murashov went on to say that the national cyberthreat centers of these countries had received requests to take measures to stop the botnet operating centers' activity, and the Olympics organization had not been damaged, thanks to the steps taken.
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics were held from February 7 to February 23, 2014.
