IAAF hacked by Fancy Bears group, fears TUE data taken

Published 03/04/2017 at 08:21 GMT

The IAAF has announced it has been hacked by the Fancy Bears group and believes records of athletes’ Therapeutic Use Exemptions have been compromised.

International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Sebastian Coe addresses a press conference

Image credit: AFP

The IAAF confirmed in a statement on Monday morning that the cyber attack was identified by an investigation commissioned by the body in January.

The statement said:

The presence of unauthorised remote access to the IAAF network by the attackers was noted on 21 February where meta data on athlete TUEs was collected from a file server and stored in a newly created file. It is not known if this information was subsequently stolen from the network, but it does give a strong indication of the attackers’ interest and intent, and shows they had access and means to obtain content from this file at will.

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The Fancy Bears group is thought to be Russian and was held responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee in the build-up to the election of Donald Trump last year.

They have also been very active in the world of sport, releasing details of TUEs for the likes of Rafael Nadal and UK athletics star Mo Farah.

Fancy Bears were also behind the release of the TUE records which provoked a firestorm of controversy around Sir Bradley Wiggins, with British Cycling and Team Sky still surrounded by questions over their conduct and subject to questioning by Parliament.

“Our first priority is to the athletes who have provided the IAAF with information that they believed would be secure and confidential,” said IAAF president Sebastian Coe.

"They have our sincerest apologies and our total commitment to continue to do everything in our power to remedy the situation and work with the world’s best organisations to create as safe an environment as we can."

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