A few days ago the Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic made headlines worldwide after the Australian government denied him entry to the country because the athlete refused to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which would have prevented him from playing the 2022 Australia Open.
Although after a few days the tennis player finally received permission from the authorities to enter the country, the hearing in which this decision was made drew attention because it was hacked by an unknown actor, who placed pornographic content and music on the screens of those attending the video call session.
A hacking group reportedly managed to break into the online meeting, taking control of the call between the judge in charge of the case, representatives of the Australian government and Djokovic, carried out through a videoconferencing platform due to the severe restrictions imposed for the fight against the coronavirus in Australia.
Several journalists were able to cover the hearing, for which they received a Microsoft Teams link sent by the court. Because the original link expired, threat actors were able to replace it with another link that, upon being selected by journalists, redirected them to pornographic content.
To make matters worse, the link had not only been shared with Australian journalists, but was received by users around the world. Around 10 AM (Australian time), hundreds of people began to enter the virtual meeting, finding that the adult material was being broadcast. Soon after, the platform collapsed due to more than 20,000 people trying to access.
Once the service was restored, the online hearing was plagued by interruptions by the hundreds of users who were still connected, who did not stop making noise and interrupting Judge Anthony Kelly: “I ask whoever is present to silence their microphones … The only people who should be in line with their active microphones are the ones who are making presentations to the court,” the judge exclaimed.
It is unknown how it is that so many users were able to access this session, although cybersecurity experts attribute it to the relevance of the topic that was discussed, in addition to the little familiarity that legal systems around the world have with these computer systems.
To learn more about information security risks, malware variants, vulnerabilities and information technologies, feel free to access the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) websites.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.