F1 teams and personnel face cybersecurity threat by global hacking network

F1 teams and personnel have become victims of a massive cybersecurity attack by a global hacking network based out of India.

The hackers, who are known as WhiteInt, operate from the tech city of India, Gurugram. The Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that the hacking network carried out the task on behalf of the private investigators used by major law firms linked to London.

Head of Strategy at Alfa Romeo, Ruth Buscombe, and the data from Alpine Team Principal, Otmar Szafnauer, during his time at Aston Martin are reported to have been accessed by the hackers.

The hack-for-hire gang targeted about 100 victims and used phishing techniques to access the emails and social media accounts of the hacked victims.

Aside from F1 personnel, the hackers even got account access to several high-profile Members of the UK parliament, the President of Switzerland, critics of Qatar state, and BBC political editor Chris Mason.

This is not the first case of hackers attacking F1. Over the past few years, there have been multiple cases of cybersecurity threats to the F1 teams.

Also Read: Ferrari has 7GB of confidential data stolen by online hackers

Ferrari was attacked by hackers and got 7GB of data stolen

Earlier this year, the Italian giants revealed that a bunch of online hackers stole about 7GB of confidential data.

The gang known as RansomXXX had taken responsibility for carrying out the attack.

A cyber-attack can be the difference between winning and losing for an F1 team.

Discover how @McLarenF1 stay on track with self-learning AI – autonomously containing threats before the damage is done. #cybersecurity #AI #F1 pic.twitter.com/C4c6DUwISz

— Darktrace (@Darktrace) February 10, 2021

However, the Maranello-based outfit later confirmed that they had not found any particular breach in their own systems. But they launched a full investigation into the matter nevertheless. The team also said that their daily operations at the factory did not get affected by the attack.

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Some other cases of cyber attacks on F1 teams

Furthermore, viruses are also a real danger to the F1 teams. Way back in 2014, the Marussia F1 team cut short its F1 testing because systems got infected by a virus.

In 2007, McLaren was fined $100 Million and was excluded from the constructors’ championship for being involved in a spying scandal.

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