Those Pesky Russian Hackers Are At It Again, This Time With WADA
Those Pesky Russian Hackers Are At It Again, This Time With WADA
After spending all summer hacking the Democratic National Committee and whistleblower Yulia Stepanova, those gosh-dang Russian hackers are back in the stree
After spending all summer hacking the Democratic National Committee and whistleblower Yulia Stepanova, those gosh-dang Russian hackers are back in the streets. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced today that Russians had illegally gained access to their athlete database. According to WADA, the information the hackers accessed included athletes' Therapeutic Use Exemptions and medical data, and the hackers are threatening to publicly release it.
TUEs have been one of the most hotly debated topics in the sport. The usual clean-sport advocates have claimed athletes are using them as a backdoor to take helpful medications and elite athletes generally deny having long-term TUEs. But the latter is only possible because the exemptions are for "therapeutic use," and are therefore based on private medical data. If that private data is released, the fallout could be massive, and the ethics are questionable.
It's also not hard to imagine the Russians' motivations here after serving as the villain of the Olympics this summer. A leak that reveals tons of famous athletes using TUEs would enable Russia to claim they weren't dirtier than anyone else.
The leak right now just includes TUEs for gymnast Simone Biles, tennis players Venus and Serena Williams, and basketball player Elena Della Donne. But the hackers have threatened to release more.
While I'm a huge fan of transparency, this is crazy. I wonder how many athletes will be squirming tonight #exposed https://t.co/nErw67eiaM
— Ben True (@bentrue) September 13, 2016
TUEs have been one of the most hotly debated topics in the sport. The usual clean-sport advocates have claimed athletes are using them as a backdoor to take helpful medications and elite athletes generally deny having long-term TUEs. But the latter is only possible because the exemptions are for "therapeutic use," and are therefore based on private medical data. If that private data is released, the fallout could be massive, and the ethics are questionable.
It's also not hard to imagine the Russians' motivations here after serving as the villain of the Olympics this summer. A leak that reveals tons of famous athletes using TUEs would enable Russia to claim they weren't dirtier than anyone else.
The leak right now just includes TUEs for gymnast Simone Biles, tennis players Venus and Serena Williams, and basketball player Elena Della Donne. But the hackers have threatened to release more.