Top Tips and Risks Ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games

As buzz and excitement continues to build around the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics, it is important to be aware of the potential cyberthreats that often target such large global events. The Tokyo Olympics in 2021 saw nearly 450 million cyber-attacks, a stark 2.5x increase from the London games. With nearly three million anticipated attendees at the Paris Olympics this year, and billions in revenue at stake, cybercriminals will not be slowing down.

What’s more, with the significant advancements in technology in just the past three years since the Tokyo Olympics, cyberattacks have become even more sophisticated. The need for robust cybersecurity measures around this years’ games is more critical than ever. Not only do security leaders, but all individuals need to be mindful of this – they must consider pre-event security risks, data collection during the event, the risks and benefits of AI at the event, but also best practices while attending the events.

Pre-event Security Risks

If you are heading out to the games in July and buying tickets, beware of scam websites attempting to sell fake resale tickets. In recent months, more than 300 scam websites have been identified, an extremely frightening number. So, how do you avoid falling victim to these scams? Be mindful that you are only purchasing tickets from the official Paris 2024 website: https://tickets.paris2024.org or https://ticket-resale.paris2024.org for resale tickets. Always double check the URL as there will be many variation URLs, apps and websites with very small differences that are fraudulent. Moreover, beware of buying tickets from individuals advertising on platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Telegram, as you can’t ever be certain what the person is selling is actually real.

When it comes to your data, it is important to know that scam sites aim to capture your personal information. Bad actors will try to obtain your phone number and email, and tell you that they will be back in touch once the tickets you are looking for become available. On the official Olympics website, or via any genuine site, you will never be asked for your full login details and will only ever be asked for your payment details for tickets on real websites or the official Olympics app. If you are reading this too late and think you may have been duped, contact your bank, block your card immediately and report the scam.

Beware of Malicious Data Collection

With millions of people traveling to Paris this summer for the Olympic games, cybercriminals are preparing themselves to attack on all fronts, one of which is through guest Wi-Fi networks that can easily be corrupted. For all of you who think logging into public Wi-Fi networks is safe, think again. Cybercriminals can easily create open Wi-Fi hotspots disguised as legitimate and free networks, which if connected to, can compromise devices and install dangerous malware. To make matters worse, bad actors can also use these tactics to launch Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks, where attackers interrupt an existing conversation or data transfer to steal login credentials, account details and credit card numbers. Once an unsuspecting user connects to the free, malicious Wi-Fi hotspot that the attacker created, the bad actor has full visibility into the exchange. The last thing anyone wants is to have to cancel credit cards and spend hours on the phone with banks, credit card companies while trying to enjoy the games.

What About Location Tracking and Biometric Data Collection? 

It’s no secret that the level of video surveillance across 41 venues at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games is predicted to be one of the biggest records broken this year, going way beyond previous Olympics. Why this level of surveillance you may be wondering? Despite its controversy, the French government sees it as a necessity to prevent terrorist attacks and help protect millions of attendees and athletes. Many have expressed concerns about how the data collected will be processed and used in the future. For many, they will feel at ease to know that facial recognition will not be applied to the footage at this year’s games, rather reliance will be placed heavily on body scanners, according to officials.

The software that analyzes video streams will be used for threats in public spaces and the systems will flag eight different categories of events: abandoned objects, abnormally heavy crowds, crowd suggest, presence of use of weapons, a person on the ground, fire and contravening traffic direction. With a city that expects to receive millions of visitors, officials and law enforcement believe that by allowing artificial intelligence programs to look through video footage, suspicious and abnormal behavior will be easily detected, therefore making the games a safer place for all attendees.

Overall, with the games less than six weeks away, it is vital to be mindful of the security risks lingering before and during the events. Remember to play close attention to ticketing URLs and sites and stick to the official sale and resale pages. Steer clear of purchasing tickets from social media or apps like WhatsApp or Telegram, as the likelihood of them being scams is high. Beware of public Wi-Fi access points as bad actors will be creating open Wi-Fi hotspots disguised as legitimate and free networks. Lastly, familiarize yourself with the knowledge that the level of video surveillance at the games will be record breaking, but that at this time, there is no facial recognition where you run the risk of misidentification, though location data collected could be accessed by nefarious actors.

About the Author

Narayana Pappu is the CEO of Zendata. He started in Data Science at Fannie Mae before the term existed. He was tasked to build a better home price index than what was available in the market. For 15 years after that at PayPal, Coinbase, and Doctor on Demand, he built and scaled low-latency and high-volume internal investigation, graph, and entity resolution tools for risk management and compliance. He also launched consumer/merchant lending solutions in the US, UK, and Germany with over 5 billion dollars in annual transaction volumes each. And drove projects around data monetization with partnerships between PayPal, advertising, and payment networks; his expertise lies in building complex data solutions that are easy to implement, use, and generate incremental value.

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