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Before the Paris 2024 Games, Google Cloud’s Mandiant team assessed Russian groups as the highest cyber risk, while Microsoft described Russian-affiliated influence campaigns intended to undermine the IOC and stoke fears of violence. Those were advance assessments, not findings that Russian actors carried out a successful attack at the Games. Afterward, France’s cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, reported 548 cybersecurity events affecting Games-related entities during its defined reporting period and said attacks did not notably disrupt the event.
What did Google and Microsoft warn about?
The reports addressed related but different risks. Mandiant’s June 5, 2024 assessment focused on cyber threats—including espionage, disruption, destructive activity and financially motivated crime. Microsoft’s June 2 report focused on influence operations: deceptive content and spoofed sites designed to harm reputations and shape public expectations.
| Report | What it assessed | Actors identified |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud / Mandiant, June 5, 2024 | Cyber threats to the Games, including potentially disruptive, destructive or hybrid activity | Mandiant assessed APT44 as the Russian actor it tracked as most likely to target the event and conduct impactful operations. |
| Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, June 2, 2024 | Influence efforts against France, President Emmanuel Macron, the IOC and the Games | Microsoft tracked Russia-affiliated actors Storm-1679 and Storm-1099, also known as Doppelganger. |
These are separate assessments; the actor names should not be treated as interchangeable. Mandiant also discussed threats from Chinese, Iranian and North Korean state-backed actors, financially motivated criminals, hacktivists and information operations. Its ranking of Russian groups as the highest risk did not mean other threats were absent.
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What cyber activity did Mandiant consider a risk?
Mandiant said its assessment drew on Russian groups’ repeated targeting of previous Olympics, Russia’s strained relationship with Europe, and pro-Russia information operations that had already targeted France. It identified APT44 as the Russian actor it tracked as most likely to target the Paris event and conduct impactful disruptive, destructive or hybrid operations, alongside intelligence collection. This was a forecast made before the Games, not a post-event attribution.
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Potential targets included event organizers and sponsors, ticketing systems, Paris infrastructure, athletes and spectators. The threat categories covered:
- Espionage: attempts to collect information from relevant organizations or individuals.
- Disruption or destruction: activity that could interfere with systems or services.
- Financially motivated crime: including ticket scams and extortion.
- Hacktivism and information operations: activity intended to disrupt, destabilize or influence audiences.
Mandiant cited earlier APT44 activity around the South Korean Olympics, including credential phishing and trojanized Android applications. That precedent informed its risk assessment; it does not establish that the same techniques were used in Paris.
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What influence campaign did Microsoft describe?
Microsoft said the campaigns sought to damage the IOC’s reputation and encourage expectations that violence would break out in Paris. It described a fake documentary called “Olympics Has Fallen,” promoted on Telegram and social media, which used AI-generated audio resembling Tom Cruise’s voice and falsely implied his participation.
The report also described fabricated clips impersonating media outlets and authorities, including false claims about terrorism, ticket returns and warnings against attending. Microsoft reported increased French-language content and a network of spoofed French news sites. These were described as deceptive campaign material, not authentic announcements or evidence that the claims were true.
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Microsoft included an attribution qualification: it said it lacked enough information to attribute a video purportedly produced by the Turkish Grey Wolves to a specific actor, even though pro-Russian bot accounts amplified it. Amplification alone did not establish who created the video.
What did French authorities report after the Games?
ANSSI’s September 10, 2024 review said it received reports of 548 cybersecurity events affecting entities connected with organizing the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games between May 8 and September 8, 2024. Nearly half of the reported events involved unavailability; a quarter of those were due to DDoS attacks.
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The number is a count of reported cybersecurity events affecting Games-related entities over ANSSI’s stated period—not 548 attacks on the Olympics, successful intrusions, or Russian operations. ANSSI’s March 2025 Cyber Threat Overview 2024 described extortion, strategic espionage and hacktivist destabilization activity around the Games, while stating that none had a notable impact on the event’s smooth running.
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How should the eightfold threat forecast be understood?
The Cyber Threat Alliance’s July 16, 2024 assessment reported Cisco’s anticipation of eight times more threats at Paris 2024 than at Tokyo 2021. That was a pre-event expectation attributed to Cisco, not a measured post-event total. It cannot be compared directly with ANSSI’s later count: the forecast and the official event tally describe different things.
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What could organizations take from the warnings?
Mandiant recommended that organizations update their threat profiles, conduct security-awareness training and consider travel-related cyber risks. Those are organizational preparation steps, not a recommendation to buy a particular consumer security product. Its report also observed that security teams were better prepared for Paris than for previous Games because of lessons from earlier events; that was Mandiant’s contemporaneous assessment.
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