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Australian athletes at the Beijing Winter Olympics are being warned they could be subject to Chinese cyber surveillance.
s are being warned to leave their phones at home and set up new unlinked email accounts to avoid having their personal information harvested by China’s government surveillance apparatus. “All athletes and visitors to China for the Olympics will be exposed to such laws and surveillance culture,” said Canberra-based cybersecurity company Internet 2.
0 in a white paper released on Tuesday.Bloomberg The paper detailed how Chinese virtual private networks and anti-virus applications harvest more information and data than needed to operate, and undertake potentially malicious behaviour. Australian athletes will compete in the Winter Games, which begin on February 4. However, Australia has joined a diplomatic boycott, which includes the United States, over China’s human rights abuses against Uyghur minorities. The Chinese government has promised to partially drop its Great Firewall at official Olympic venues and hotels. But security concerns remain, and a raft of countries has warned their athletes to leave their phones at home due toIn its white paper, Internet 2.0 made three core recommendations to athletes looking for Winter Olympics glory. First, that athletes and visitors buy a new phone to use only while in China, protecting information on their home country devices. Second, create a new email address and browser account to use on the so-called burner phone – to mitigate risks of cloud accounts, such as Google or Apple, connecting personal information to the new burner phone. And third, not use the device again once they have left China, as the details are likely collected and stored, posing a risk to personal information outside of China. The Australian Olympic Committee said it was taking all appropriate cybersecurity measures to ensure protection from malware and viruses.“As at previous Games, the IOC provides the athletes with a complimentary phone and SIM card, while the AOC provides HQ staff with a local SIM.” The AOC said athletes would have access to the official Wi-Fi at the Olympics to access social media and other communications. “AOC support staff and officials will also have access to an AOC-established Wi-Fi in areas allocated to us, which is being provided by our IT branch,” the spokesman said. The Beijing Olympic Committee has rejected the surveillance warning as groundless and wholly unnecessary. China’s state-run newspaper,has downplayed security concerns, opining the warnings as a cover-up of the West’s own deeds.The first application analysed by Internet 2.0 was QI-ANXIN – one of the largest security companies in China and an official sponsor of the Olympic Games – and its VPN.“The VPN applications for both android and Apple are similar, and the Apple version collects all network information that android collects,” the report said. “While analysing the source code, we noted that the Apple IOS VPN software allows access to the camera and photo library as standard permissions. These third-party application permissions ... are not functional for the use of VPN software.” The second application it reverse-engineered was that of Beijing Kingsoft Office, an anti-virus software. “The anti-virus installer file flagged as potentially containing malicious behaviours or properties. The installer also runs a file that potentially accesses data from internet browsers that are also running on the user’s desktop computer,” the paper said. “This file potentially copies all browser cookies as well as personal information and credentials. In our opinion, the use of this anti-virus carries risk on use, as the software provider could attain access to the internet usage history of the user.” is a senior reporter at The Australian Financial Review. He is a former media editor and telecommunications reporter at the masthead and has previously worked at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Fox Sports Australia and News Corp.
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