China Winter Games Cloud Athletes Monitor Alerts

This content was published on Jan 20 2022 – 09:14
January 20 2022 – 09:14

(AFP)

A growing number of Western countries and cybersecurity groups have issued digital monitoring alerts for the Beijing Winter Olympics, with some advising foreign athletes to leave their phones and personal computers at home.

China hopes to hold a successful coronavirus-free Games to improve its international image.

However, the preparations were fraught with controversy, including several diplomatic boycotts over China’s human rights record and the safety of famous tennis player Peng Shuai, who went missing for several weeks after a communist leader was accused of sexual assault.

Concerns are now turning to whether foreign athletes, dignitaries and members of the press will be safe from China’s wide range of surveillance tools.

All those who participate in the games will be in a bubble that isolates them from the rest of the population to reduce the chances of infection with the Corona virus in China, which maintains a strict policy to eliminate the virus.

A group of researchers from Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said this week that the virus-tracking app that all attendees must use has been found to have a “minor but devastating” encryption flaw that allows personal information to be leaked.

Citizen Lab said it notified Beijing regulators of the case in December, but received no response.

“China has a history of pressuring encryption technology to enable political oversight and surveillance,” said researcher Jeffrey Nokel.

“Therefore, it is reasonable to ask whether the coding of this app was intentionally sabotaged for monitoring purposes or if the flaw was caused by the developer’s negligence,” he added.

Canberra-based cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 warned in a recent report that official game software, including a VPN and antivirus, from Chinese tech sponsors could collect information from users without their knowledge.

– Disposable phones –

The Winter Games organizing committee told AFP that the allegations of cyber threats “have no evidence and the concerns are completely unnecessary.” “The relevant information is only used for the Olympic and Winter Games,” he added.

Similarly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rejected Citizen Lab’s version, citing assessments by two unnamed cybersecurity organizations that “confirmed no critical vulnerabilities”.

But this did not help reassure some Western teams.

The Olympic federations of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have recommended that athletes leave their personal devices at home and use disposable phones, if possible, during the Games in China.

“We reminded all members of Team Canada that the Games represent a unique cybercrime opportunity,” the Canadian Olympic Committee said in a statement, and called on athletes to “do more.”

Dutch and Belgian media reported last week that the athletes had received the same recommendation. Bloomberg reports that Australia will install its own Wi-Fi network for its athletes in select regions.

But other European countries have not expressed any concern about the issue, including Spain and Italy, whose Olympic committees told AFP that they had not made any recommendations on cyber security for athletes.

– Without supervision, but with supervision –

China has some of the most sophisticated tools in the world to monitor and monitor the internet of its people, and it can block Western platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The International Olympic Committee says China will give accredited foreign athletes and journalists uncensored access to the Internet via Wi-Fi networks and SIM cards.

State-owned China Unicom will give 5G SIM cards to journalists from abroad, according to the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

But analysts fear that such networks may be vulnerable to surveillance and theft of personal information.

For Robert Potter, co-founder of 2.0, caution is in order.

“Without censorship, it will not be the same without censorship,” he told AFP. “I don’t know of anyone who has entered China without encountering some form of electronic surveillance.”