Russian hackers broke into the World Anti-Doping Agency database, stealing medical data of athletes competing at the Rio Olympics, the agency said Tuesday.
The cyber criminal group, known as “Tsar Team” and “Fancy Bear,” publicly released some of the stolen data and threatened to leak more in the future. The same group is thought to have been behind the Democratic National Committee hack in June.
The database of the World Anti-Doping Agency was accessed through an account created by the International Olympic Committee for the Rio games, WADA said.
The agency said it believed the access was obtained through “spear phishing” of email accounts. Spear phishing is an email that appears to be from an address known to the recipient, asking for sensitive information.
This is not the first time the agency was targeted. The doping agency database account of whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova was hacked in August. The runner helped expose the scale of Russian doping problem last year.
“WADA condemns these ongoing cyber-attacks that are being carried out in an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system,” said Olivier Niggli, the agency’s director general.
He added that the hack is “greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia.”
WADA is not popular in Russia. It had recommended banning all Russian athletes from the Rio 2016 games, after an independent report said the country operated a state-sponsored doping program during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Russian officials and athletes likened the move to Cold War era conflicts.
The International Olympic Committee didn’t issue a blanket ban on Russian athletes in Rio, leaving the decision on competitors’ eligibility up to their respective sporting federations.
Russian track and field athletes and were banned completely from competing. Other Russian athletes were considered on case by case basis and some were allowed to participate.
