On your marks!

The Beijing Olympics start tomorrow. The World’s biggest sporting event of all time, I am sure that it will not disappoint. 

In winning the Olympics, Beijing outlined that it would harness the power of IT, innovate around it, to bring the Games to new audiences. We will see a convergence of IT and Media on a scale not seen before. Many of the big Media companies and franchises have extensive plans to bring the games to the ‘net in a big way. I know that many network administrators are bracing themselves for the impact of ‘streaming’ video of Games – if they allow it on your corporate network.  It will be interesting to see (or maybe not) what the strain will be on your ISP as well. 

Where you have a mass audience connected to the ‘net, then in the shadows the’ bad guys’ will be lurking. In the Symantec State of Spam report for August, we are already seeing Spammers peddling their wares on the back of the Olympics. Symantec Security Response have already written up a blog on an attempted Phishing attack, purporting to sell tickets for the games. The creators of the site went to great lengths to make it convincing, even using an SSL connection, believe it or not. 

So, get on your marks, get set, and it is ‘Go’ for no doubt many Olympic related Spams, Phishing attempts, links to web sites that will be showing funny/curious videos of events of the games etc. So, I say, “Citius, Altius Fortius”, to all of my colleagues in the IT Security industry, to keep you all safe and for you to enjoy the Games.

August 7, 2008 | Filed Under Events, Identity theft, Security, Spam, Uncategorized 

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