*SOUTH KOREA: *South Korea on Saturday investigated a mysterious internetshutdown during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, which followswarnings of possible cyberattacks during the Pyeongchang Games.
Internal internet and wifi systems crashed at about 7:15 pm (1015 GMT) onFriday and were still not back to normal at midday on Saturday, Gamesorganisers said.
Cyber-security teams and experts from South Korea’s defence ministry, plusfour other ministries, formed part of a taskforce investigating theshutdown, they said, adding that it didn’t affect the high-tech openingceremony.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, South KoreanPresident Moon Jae-in and US Vice-President Mike Pence were among the VIPsat Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium late on Friday.
The outage follows warnings of malware phishing attacks targetingorganisations working at the Olympics, and allegations of cyberattacks fromRussia which has denied any involvement.
North Korea has also blamed for a series of cyber incidents including theWannaCry global ransomware attack, which infected 300,000 computersworldwide last May.
“We don’t want to speculate because we’re still trying to find out what theroot source is,” said Nancy Park, a spokeswoman for the Games organisers.
“We have some reports, we’ve been working all night trying to find out andworking with our partners.”
*WannaCry*
South Korea showed off its technical expertise with a dazzling gala openingceremony on Friday which included state-of-the-art special effects andaugmented reality to add extra impact for TV viewers.
While internet and wifi were affected across the Olympic site spread overtwo main venues in mountainous eastern South Korea organisers said therewas no impact on competition, which got into full swing on Saturday.
“There were some issues that impacted some of our non-critical systems lastnight for a few hours,” Games organisers said in a statement.
“These have not disrupted any events, or had any effect on the safety andsecurity of any athletes or spectators,” they added.
“All competitions are running as planned and the systems are working at theexpected level.”
Last month, cyber-security firm McAfee said it had uncovered an attacktargeting organisations involved with the Olympics, using a malicious emailattachment.
North Korea has been accused of involvement in a number of cyber incidents,including WannaCry although it has slammed that accusation as “absurd”.
Russia has also denied launching any hacking attacks on the PyeongchangOlympics, where its team is formally banned following the revelation ofsystemic doping.
While organisers wouldn’t comment on the possibility that an attack wasbehind the shutdown, experts believe disrupting the Games would be seen asa coup for many hackers.
“The whole world’s watching. It’s one of the largest stages you canpossibly have to get a message out there,” Ross Rustici, senior directorfor intelligence Boston-based Cybereason told the Tribune News Service.
“You got a lot of lower-tier guys going after these games. It’shead-hunting, bragging rights,” Rustici was quoted as saying. – AFP