Russian hackers release 2nd batch of WADA’s athletes doping data

PanARMENIAN.Net - Hacktivist group ‘Fancy Bear’ has released a second batch of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s medical data on 25 athletes from the United States, Germany, Britain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Russia, RT reports.

The group which first exposed the lab results of international athletes on September 13, went on to publish ten more names from the United States, five from Germany, five from Great Britain, one from the Czech Republic, one from Denmark, one from Poland, one from Romania, and one from Russia.

The list of “doping addicts” on the hackers’ website was expanded and included further laboratory test results exposing alleged doping violations.

“The list of doping addicts includes not only the athletes of the top Olympic teams but also those who compete for other countries,” the group said in a statement, while promising there will be more leaks to come.

WADA has confirmed the latest data was “illegally gained” by hackers when they breached the agency’s Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS).

“The group has illegally gained access to ADAMS via an International Olympic Committee (IOC)-created account for the Rio 2016 Games. Confined to the Games, the account includes such confidential medical data as Therapeutic Use Exemptions delivered by International Sports Federations (IFs) and National Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs). The group is releasing the data that it has obtained from this account in batches,” WADA said in a statement.

WADA believes that hackers used spear phishing of email accounts to gain access to the data, “confined to the Rio 2016 Games,” and has “no reason to believe that other ADAMS data has been compromised.”

WADA pinned the blame on Russia, citing “retaliation” for the agency’s “independent” investigation which resulted in blanket bans of Russian Olympians and Paralympians as an apparent reason for the attack.

The Director General called the hack a “criminal attack” which aimed to “smear” the reputations of world athletes and asked the Russian government to “stop” the hackers.

Russia is in no way tied to the hacking of the WADA database, Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Tuesday after the initial exposure of the athletes doping data.

The second trove of names includes Bethanie Lynn Mattek-Sands, an American professional tennis player who has won three Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles and two in mixed doubles, and Dagmara Wozniak, an American sabre fencer who represented the U.S. at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

It also included professional U.S. women’s basketball players Brittney Griner and DeAnna Marie Price, an American track and field athlete competing primarily in the hammer throw. The list also includes Kathleen Baker an American swimmer who won one gold and one silver at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The only Russian mentioned in the leak is flyweight boxer and two-time World Champion Misha Aloyan.

The first set of revelations included U.S. tennis icons, the Williams sisters, with documents purporting to show that they were greenlighted to take such items as oxycodone and prednisone, banned by WADA, but allowed for “therapeutic use".