One of the official broadcasters of Euro 2024 confirmed that it suffered multiple cyber attacks that interrupted the online broadcast of a key match.
Polish broadcaster TVP said in a post on Twitter/X that it has been the target of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on two separate occasions during the tournament.
The attacks could have interrupted the online broadcast of Poland's match against Austria on Friday the 21st, after the interruption of the match between Poland and Holland the previous weekend.
“Technical problems” or DDoS attack?
“We apologize for the technical problems related to the broadcast of the Poland-Austria match on the Internet,” TVP said in its post.
“After less than a minute, we took action in collaboration with national operators, which allowed the attack to be mitigated. “IT teams have restored service.”
DDoS attacks target websites by bombarding them with large amounts of traffic, overwhelming servers and taking them offline, which in this case caused the online stream to struggle with the volume of traffic it was asked to handle.
TVP said the previous attack appeared to have been launched from IP addresses within Poland, but did not comment on the subsequent incident.
In a separate statement, Pawel Olszewski, the Polish government's deputy minister for digital affairs, told local media that evidence pointed to Russian sources being behind the attack.
Olszewski said the attack was intended to “prevent Polish citizens from watching the match online,” but that “the attack was quickly repelled… If our services had not been alert, there could have been real riots, as everyone was anxiously awaiting the Eurocup”. and this game.”
TVP revealed that it has also launched an alternative website to stream future broadcasts of Euro 2024 games, including Poland's final match against France later this week.
Through Reuters
