FIA First to Fall In Larger Hacker Attack on Motorsports

The FIA was recently attacked by some F1 teams for the 2026 regulations. This is the nature of the sport where pushing and pulling happens. However, nobody expected hackers to go after an organization as big as the FIA. Yet it did happen, and the FIA has become the first of many motorsport governing bodies to fall. 

In a recent press release, the FIA confirmed that it suffered a cyber attack that gave hackers access to the emails within their ranks. The cyberattack is said to be a phishing attack where fraudulent mail, calls, and texts were used to trick employees into sharing sensitive data. FIA confirmed that the attacks led to “unauthorized access to personal data contained in two email accounts belonging to the FIA.”

#CyberAttack

The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), organizer of Formula 1 events, experienced a data breach due to a phishing attack targeting two email accounts belonging to the FIA

The FIA stated that these accounts contained personal information but did… pic.twitter.com/uxMlSeKZSG

— HackManac (@H4ckManac) July 4, 2024

“The FIA took all actions to rectify the issues, notably in cutting the illegitimate accesses in a very short time, once it became aware of the incidents and notified the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (the French data protection regulator), and the Préposé Fédéral à la Protection des Données et à la Transparence (the Swiss data protection regulator),” said FIA in press release.

The FIA didn’t reveal the specific details of the attack. It is not known how many people were affected by it, whether there have been any communications from the hackers’ side asking for ransom, or what was the type of data that was stolen. However, the identity or IP address of the hackers had been identified. 

When further questioned about the attack, the governing body of F1 revealed that multiple motorsports authorities had become victims of this. The other authorities in question, however, remain unknown as of now.