IN 2014 TEAM MARUSSIA
(NOW KNOWN AS MANOR RACING)
SUFFERED A TROJAN-TYPE ATTACK
Alex Moiseev, Managing Director
of Kaspersky Lab Europe and Kaspersky Motorsport team driver said:
“Being in motorsport with all the
data flowing gives us new technical
challenges to explore and right now
we know that we have a competitive
advantage of a few years compared to anybody else in the industry.”
This new strain of cyber attack is
very different from what motorsport
has seen before. Previously we
have seen Trojan attacks where team’s IT networks are compromised from within resulting
in challenges such as computer crashes, files being deleted and data being corrupted.
And we have seen distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks where systems, usually
web sites or web services, are flooded with
requests from the outside that overload the
target system’s resources resulting in temporary access disruption.
Back in 2014 Anglo-Russian team Marussia,
which is now known as Manor Racing, suffered a Trojan-type attack. Their server racks were
attacked meaning their cars and team lost valuable track-time while trying to restore normal
service. And further back in 2012 the Formula
One® website (F1.com) was subjected to a
DDoS attack by the activist group called Anonymous during the Bahrain race that year.
But Ransomware is different, it doesn’t just
simply disrupt service it holds the targeted
system’s data and files hostage for monetary
gain. With the data and files within motorsport
teams of such great value commercially and
operationally this is now a real threat to the
teams and the sport.
But it is not all bad news because in 2015
Kaspersky Lab deprived criminals of nearly
$53,000,000 by actively fighting Crypto-Ransonware and continues to lead the march to
protect what matters most to people whether it’s
privacy, family, finances, customers, business
success or critical infrastructure. Kaspersky Lab
have made it their mission to secure it all.
The first step in protecting motorsport data
and files is the realisation that attacks are possible and also to realise the potential losses
that can be involved when not being proactive about the threats.
Up to date systems, software and hardware
all play a key part in protecting data and files
from threats but the main player will always
be cyber security software because this looks
for possible entry points, malicious files, data
and many other elements to therefore proactively help to thwart attacks.
Alex Moiseev, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Europe and Kaspersky Motorsport
team driver said commented: “At Kaspersky
Lab we create cutting edge and never-seenbefore solutions to shore up cyber security defences and keep the motorsport industry safe
and thriving for years to come”.