Going to the Olympics? Prepare to be hacked

Deborah Salmi 6 Feb 2014

Going to the Olympics? Prepare to be hacked

If you are one of the thousands of visitors headed to Sochi, Russia for Friday’s 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony then you will be hacked. Richard Engel, from NBC news, reported that it’s not if you get hacked, it’s when, and he discovered that it starts from the moment you turn on your device.

In an experiment conducted by NBC Nightly News, their just out-of-the-box computer and smartphone were hacked in seconds while in Sochi. "The State Department warns that travelers should have no expectation of privacy; even in their hotel rooms. And as we found out, you are especially exposed as soon as you try and communicate with anything," reported Engel.

"As tourists and families of athletes arrive in Sochi…if they fire up their phones at baggage claim, it's probably too late to save the integrity of their electronics and everything inside them. Visitors to Russia can expect to be hacked," said NBC's anchorman Brian Williams as he introduced the report.

Watch the video report of NBC’s experiment (there's an ad first, so give it a few seconds):

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UPDATE: NBC has taken some criticism for the story since this report, with claims that it was misleading and promoted scaremongering. The experts they worked with released a white paper describing how each new device, without the protection of antivirus software, was compromised. NBC responded by stating that their experiment was designed to "show in general how easily a non-expert can fall victim."

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