We recently saw that there were attacks that attempted, in some countries, to affect the European elections. On this occasion, we echo a DDoS attack that has already occurred during a Euro Cup soccer match. We are going to tell you how an attack of this type has affected and what exactly it consists of. Could watching Spain’s next match on television, as well as any other, be in danger?
There is no doubt that cybercriminals take advantage of specific situations, which attract a lot of attention or have many users. This is what happens with an event of these characteristics, such as the top European national team competition. They know that the impact can be very important, so they try to act.
DDoS against a party
Specifically, this denial of service or DDoS attack took place in the opening match of group D, between Poland and the Netherlands. It affected Polish public television, TVP, which was going to broadcast that match. The attackers had scheduled it for the start of that match, with the aim of leaving the spectators without the broadcast.
Luckily, the station was prepared and it took them just a minute to quickly take action. The match could be broadcast and there were no visible problems for viewers, although that does not mean that, in a hidden way, they did have to implement measures immediately from Polish television.
But what is a denial of service attack? Basically, it consists of sending many requests to saturate a server. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, in a short time. If those servers are not prepared, they stop functioning normally. It may affect web pages, Streaming services, etc.
In this case, there were multiple requests from IP addresses within Poland. However, in Poland they are convinced that Russia is behind this sabotage attempt. It must be taken into account that cybercriminals can use devices of all types and hosted in many places. Basically, they use an army of bots to do this.
Can it happen in other games?
The truth is that yes. In other matches, hackers may try to attack the servers and put the viewing of a match at risk. It could affect a match for the Spanish team, as well as any other. Now, it must be mentioned that television stations are very prepared to deal with a fairly common type of attack.
This is not something exclusive to the Euro Cup, far from it. We have seen attacks like this against sporting events before. An example was at the 2018 winter games, which were held in South Korea. There were also attempts at sabotage during the World Cup in Qatar, more recently. In addition, there are threats against the Paris Olympic Games, which will be held in a few weeks.
At the home user level, what you can do is prevent your devices from being part of a botnet and getting into a DDoS attack. It is key that you have everything updated to correct any vulnerability. It is also important that you avoid clicking on suspicious links or installing software that could be dangerous. Protecting the IP, reducing exposure and configuring the devices well will be essential.
