London 2012 Olympics security officials have revealed that cyber attackers targeted opening ceremony of last year’s games which aimed at taking down electricity at the stadium.
Olympic cyber security head Oliver Hoare told the BBC that he received a phone call on the opening ceremony about the possible attack from the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Hoare told the news agency that "There was a suggestion that there was a credible attack on the electricity infrastructure supporting the Games."
"We’d tested no less than five times the possibility of an attack, a cyber-attack, on the electricity infrastructure," Hoare said.
He said: "Thirty seconds at the opening ceremony with the lights going down would have been catastrophic in terms of reputational hit."
GCHQ head Iain Lobban told the BBC that such an attack remains a realistic threat.
"We have seen technical reconnaissance of parts of our critical national infrastructure. Not to such an extent that we would raise a red flag but certainly we’ve seen an interest, an intentional interest, in parts of that infrastructure," Lobban said.
Earlier this month, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) joined hands with nine of the world’s biggest weapon manufacturers and telecoms providers to bolster the country’s defences against cyber attacks, as part of its efforts to deal with growing hacking threats.
