Even the BND is involved: huge fear of the Olympic eavesdropping

Even BND is on
Great fear of the Olympic eavesdropping

The corona virus is causing problems for the Olympic Games. The health of the participants is important, to prevent this there is an app in which health and travel data must be stored. However, China seems to be using this in a completely different way. Not the only way people spy.

Overheard conversations? Theft of important data in the fight for gold? Total Surveillance? In addition to anticipation, the German winter sports stars are also afraid of cyber attacks at the Olympics in China. The German athletes are not supposed to use personal mobile phones in Beijing for fear of espionage, even the foreign secret service BND has been called in.

“Who else should you ask about this? We had to contact someone,” said Alpin boss Wolfgang Maier about the unusual step. In view of the extensive surveillance instruments in China, the intelligence service advised “leaving at home” information on waxing skis or material research and taking equipment “on which only the essentials are on it”. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) advised athletes to only use disposable cell phones. “I’m quite honest: If you give advice like that, you don’t have a good feeling about it, otherwise you wouldn’t give this advice in the first place,” said DOSB President Thomas Weikert at Spox.

The official Olympic app “My2022”, which all athletes, coaches, supervisors and officials have to install on a smartphone and store private health and travel data in order to be allowed to enter China, seems to be particularly delicate. Officially, this is intended to improve contact tracing in the event of positive corona tests, but experts fear that the software could be used for an eavesdropping attack.

Intentionally sabotaged for surveillance purposes?

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab have shown that the app has a “simple but devastating” encryption flaw that could allow personal data such as health information and voice messages to be stolen. China has “in the past subverted encryption technologies to carry out political censorship and surveillance,” it said in a statement. “Therefore, the question is legitimate whether the encryption in this app was deliberately sabotaged for surveillance purposes or whether the error is due to the developers’ negligence is.” Other nations such as the USA, the Netherlands and Great Britain also sounded the alarm – athletes should not take their own computers and telephones to China, only rental or disposable devices.

The local Olympic organizers rejected the allegations that there was “no evidence” of cyber threats and that “relevant information” was only used for the games. But that probably didn’t really reassure anyone outside of China. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has also informed the DOSB and some athletes about the risk of being investigated or bugged in China, said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior. In addition, the BSI has adapted and distributed its guidelines on IT security. The Australian team wants to provide their own WiFi for the athletes in designated areas.

You can’t be too careful. “The surveillance state has no exception clause for athletes,” Robert Potter, an expert on internet security, told the AFP news agency: “I don’t know anyone who has entered China and has not been electronically monitored in some way.”

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