Sun, Oct 16, 2016 page12

• US athletes reassured after hack

  SECURITY FAILURE? International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said the global doping agency WADA should ‘significantly improve its information security’

  • NY Times News Service
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  The US Anti-Doping Agency is seeking to reassure US athletes that their private medical information is safe after hackers allegedly gained access to the e-mail account of one of the agency’s officials.

  The same cyberespionage group blamed for the theft of private medical information from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) athlete database last summer more recently has been accused of compromising an e-mail account belonging to the science director of the US agency.

  The agency said the breach occurred early last month in Rio de Janeiro at the start of the Paralympic Games.

  

  US Anti-Doping Agency head Travis Tygart speaks to reporters at the EU Council in Brussels on May 17, 2013.

  Photo: AP

  US federal authorities have assessed the extent of the damage and are investigating the attack, the US agency said.

  Travis Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency, on Friday called the attacks “deplorable,” adding: “Our athletes here in the US get it, and they see these cyberattacks for exactly what they are: A blatant attempt to baselessly smear the reputations of clean athletes and to distract from the state-supported doping system that corrupted the Sochi [Winter Olympic] Games” in Russia.

  The hackers, calling themselves Fancy Bear — a group believed to be associated with the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency — published files this month relating to US athletes whom sports authorities had granted waivers to take prohibited drugs.

  Such waivers, known as therapeutic use exemptions, have been central to the recent Fancy Bear hacks. When the group began publishing athlete files in the middle of last month, it said that the exemptions — granted by top sports authorities and approved by WADA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — constituted sanctioned doping and delivered an unfair advantage.

  Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed that view this week, suggesting that athletes with drug exemptions should compete in special, segregated categories.

  The Russian government has denied ties to the Fancy Bear attack.

  More than 25 US athletes — including high-profile Olympians like Simone Biles and Serena and Venus Williams — were affected by the hackers’ first several rounds of disclosures, staggered over several weeks.

  Biles, 19, subsequently said that she had received a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder years earlier, adding that she was not ashamed of her disorder or by the disclosure of her sensitive medical information.

  Also affected were more than 100 athletes from 26 other countries — including one from Russia — who had permission to take a range of medications to treat conditions such as allergies, asthma and attention disorders.

  With the latest batch of files, published on Friday last week and drawing on the US agency e-mails, the hackers focused squarely on the US, citing “more than 200 American athletes who have permission to take banned drugs” whose names and waivers they had gained access to via a spreadsheet stored on e-mail.

  The US files, first reported by Forbes, were taken down for roughly five days, during which the Fancy Bear site was down.

  The e-mail breach affected one individual’s account, the US anti-doping agency said this week; that account belonged to Matthew Fedoruk, the organization’s science director.

  Fedoruk was working at the oceanside hotel where the International Paralympic Committee was headquartered, in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood of Rio. His account was thought to have been compromised through the Wi-Fi network he was using there.

  The organization was not aware of the breach until Fancy Bear announced it about a month later.

  The US agency this week said that its e-mail servers had not been compromised and that the breach had affected Fedoruk’s account alone.

  The agency said it had determined that Fancy Bear made failed attempts through different channels to gain access to other files, including the agency’s financial records.

  In recent days, Tygart sent a video message to all US athletes whose information had been made public.

  He said he had spoken with dozens of athletes and their parents by telephone.

  Tygart called on global sports leaders to condemn the hacks.

  IOC president Thomas Bach has called the breaches “unacceptable,” while suggesting that responsibility lies with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which ought to “significantly improve its information security standards to comply with the international data privacy regulations and to prevent data leakage of critical information.”

  The Fancy Bear hackers have threatened to continue to release information, suggesting on Friday last week that Fedoruk’s e-mails were only the start of the correspondence they had obtained.

  As investigations into elaborate government-ordered cheating by Russia at the last Winter Olympics continue, “some leaders in Olympic sport have taken the bait and are talking more about this,” Tygart said of the hacks, “than about imposing meaningful consequences on a state-run doping program and how to ensure that it never happens again.”
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