In February 2018, during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang South Korea, a cyber attack struck, wiping out a lot of the Olympic’s digital infrastructure. Teams rushed to get things back up, but it was bad. Malware had repeatedly wiped the domain controllers rendering a lot of the network unusable. Who would do such a thing?
We will talk with Andy Greenberg to discuss Olympic Destroyer, a chapter from his book Sandworm. Affiliate link here.
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Sources
- Book: Sandworm by Andy Greenberg
- https://www.wired.com/story/untold-story-2018-olympics-destroyer-cyberattack/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/04/we-need-hold-kremlin-responsible-its-cyberattack-olympics/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/19/britain-alleges-russia-cyber-offensive-attempted-to-sabotage-tokyo-olympics-.html
- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/six-russian-gru-officers-charged-connection-worldwide-deployment-destructive-malware-and
- Video: DOJ press statement for indicting 6 Russian hackers
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
This episode was produced by Eileen Guo and Ilana Strauss.
Artwork this episode by Ross Branchette.
Sound design by Garrett Tiedemann.
Audio cleanup by Proximity Sound.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, a cloudlifter, Motu M2, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: Hackers in the Olympics? Yeah, it’s happened in the fencing competition of all places. Have you watched modern fencing lately? If you watch it, I have one tip for you; don’t blink. Fencing is extremely fast. The blades are whipping through the air. [MUSIC] As a spectator, you’re trying to see who hit who first, keeping your eyes on two different swords at once. It’s impossible to tell. In fact, it’s impossible for the judges to tell, too, so they’ve adopted technology to help. Now, I’m not talking about some high-speed camera. No, it’s more technical than that. There’s circuitry involved. In order to score a point, your foil or sword needs to apply 0.75 kilograms of pressure to the opponent’s target area which is their head or chest. You have to directly poke with the foil. Slashing or hitting the target with the side of the foil doesn’t count. To help the judges figure out who struck who first with enough force, they’ve added electronic components to the sword and protective gear.