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“The impacts of cyber incidents on the sport sector are wide-ranging with cyber extortion, third-party breaches and hacktivism able to cause significant disruption though outages and interferences, while also threatening reputational damage, regulatory and legal impacts from the disclosure of personal and sensitive information, financial loss and IP theft,” he said.
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The report highlighted several recent incidents impacting Australian teams: in November 2023 cyber extortion group Cuba listed AFL club Port Adelaide on its dark web dedicated leak site. The club said membership data was not hosted on its internal IT network and was not affected. And, in October 2023, Pakistani hacktivist group Team Insane Pakistan claimed responsibility for taking down the website of Optus Stadium, saying it did it for “fun”.
CyberCX was the cybersecurity partner of the Australian Open, and Paitaridis, a former Optus executive, said the event team had successfully thwarted numerous threats. “We’re pleased to say there are no breaches or compromises at the Australian Open this year,” he said.
Katherine Mansted, executive director for CyberCX Intelligence, said the report also highlighted the convergence of geopolitics and sports, in a year that is likely to see deepening geopolitical fragmentation and political polarisation given the ongoing wars and upcoming elections.
“Nation-states, especially authoritarian governments, are willing to use their intelligence and cyber capabilities to target and attack sports events and peak bodies to advance their national narratives and other malicious objectives.”
Researchers from Cybernews said the Football Australia leak, which was probably due to human error and not a cyberattack, included players’ passport details along with customers’ ticket purchase information, and internal infrastructure details.
A spokeswoman for Football Australia said that an investigation remains ongoing.
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