Coe apologises after IAAF suffers cyber attack
‘No sign of clenbuterol abuse in re-testing samples’
ZURICH, April 3, (RTRS): The governing body of global athletics (IAAF) said on Monday it had suffered a cyber attack which it believes has compromised information about athletes’ medical records.
An IAAF statement said the hacking group known as Fancy Bear was believed to be behind the attack in February and that it targeted information concerning applications by athletics for Therapeutic Use Exemptions.
The IAAF said it had contacted athletes who had applied for TUEs since 2012 and its president, Sebastian Coe, apologised.
“Our first priority is to the athletes who have provided the IAAF with information that they believed would be secure and confidential,” he said in the statement. “They have our sincerest apologies and our total commitment to continue to do everything in our power to remedy the situation.”
TUEs are issued by sports federations and national anti-doping organizations to allow athletes to take certain banned substances for verified medical needs.
The IAAF said that data on athlete TUEs was “collected from a file server and stored on a newly created file”.
“The attack by Fancy Bear, also known as APT28, was detected during a proactive investigation carried out by cyber incident response (CIR) firm Context Information Security,” the IAAF said.
It was not known if the information was stolen from the network, the IAAF said, but the incident was “a strong indication of the attackers’ interest and intent, and shows they had access and means to obtain content from this file at will”.
The attack was uncovered after British company Context Information Security conducted a investigation of the IAAF’s systems at the request of the athletics body.
Context Information Security said in a separate statement that it was a “sophisticated intrusion” and that “the IAAF have understood the importance and impact of the attack and have provided us comprehensive assistance.”
Fancy Bear, widely believed to be from Russia, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Last year, the same group hacked into the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) database and published the confidential medical records of several dozen athletes.Those included cyclist Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France winner and Britain’s most decorated
Coe
Olympian with eight medals, who was revealed to have used TUEs before key races. Wiggins retired last year under something of a cloud after it was revealed he took corticosteroid triamcinolone for asthma, although he broke no anti-doping rules.
The IAAF banned Russia’s athletics federation after a WADA commission report found evidence of state-sponsored doping. Almost all Russia’s athletes missed the track and field events at the Rio Olympics last year and are likely to also miss the world athletics championships in London in August.
Meanwhile, the IOC said it had not detected any significant abuse of clenbuterol after finding “very low levels” of the banned substance during re-testing of samples from the Beijing Olympics.
The International Olympic Commmittee’s comments on Monday came one day after German broadcaster ARD reported that traces of the banned substance were found in samples provided by members of the Jamaican sprint team at the games in 2008.
Jamaica won 10 medals in the sprint events led by Usain Bolt, who took gold in the men’s 100 and 200 metres.
In a statement, the IOC said that “very low levels of clenbuterol” were found in the cases of athletes from a number of countries and different sports. It said the athletes were innocent and could not give any more details.
Without mentioning Jamaica or the ARD allegations, the IOC said that all values were “in the range of potential meat contamination cases”.
It said it “carefully deliberated” whether or not to proceed with the cases and consulted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
According to the IOC, WADA said that it could not find “any significant and consistent pattern of abuse of clenbuterol in these cases and that it would be appropriate not to take these cases any further”.
The IOC stores samples for a decade to test with newer methods or for new substances. It ordered re-tests of samples from Beijing in the run-up to last year’s Rio Olympics to try and root out drug cheats.
Clenbuterol is a performance-enhancing substance that is sometimes found in weight-loss pills and is on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned list.
In 2011, more than 100 players tested positive for clenbuterol during the under-17 soccer world championship held in Mexico. They were also acquitted of any wrongdoing after FIFA, soccer’s governing body, said they were victims of a health problem in the country. Head of Kuwait Olympic Committee Sheikh Fahad Jaber Al-Ali received in his office the Ambassador of China to Kuwait Wang Di.
During the meeting, they discussed various issues concerning sports and youths, as well as ways to improve relations in this aspect.
Sheikh Fahad expressed his keenness to discuss with his guest the possibility of Kuwait and China cooperating on sports level, especially in the schools sector, which is the foundation for building good individual and social personality.
They also discussed the need for exchanging experiences and expertise