Formula One is Vulnerable to Individuals Being Targeted Fending off Cyber Attacks

To understand the mentality of a cyber attacker is a very difficult process. Some do it for fun, because they can, some do it for blackmail and some do it to influence the outcome of sporting events for gambling purposes. Formula One is well covered against corporate cyber-attacks but the seven thousand individuals who work for teams are not so well protected and it is the 1,400 of them who attend races who are most vulnerable.

Eric Herren of Sport XRay is the go-to expert for this form of cyber terrorism. He is naturally a very guarded individual who has a lot of potential conflicts of interest to juggle.

Sport XRay describes itself as “a network for fair sports with integrity.” Eric Herren, is a Swiss counter terrorism expert, who has a simple motto: “We want to preserve and protect the traditional values of sport, like fairness and integrity.”

Cyber attacks take many different forms and Herren’s Sport Xray is one of the main defenders of sport against cyber attacks. His concern is cyber attackers who may try to change the results of sporting events. Herren believes the main way this is attempted is through blackmailing people who are in a position where they are able to interfere with outcomes internally.

Zurich based, Sport XRay is becoming more and more interested in Formula One especially after the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix where the result appeared to be changed by extreme carelessness in the Mercedes pit garage. To a jaundiced outside view, it looks as though the Mercedes team deliberately threw away the race such was the incompetence shown by the pit crew. The truth of what really happened that afternoon will forever remain buried deep inside the Mercedes-AMG team.

Herren won’t be drawn on what happened in Bahrain but will say: “The credibility of sport depends on fairness, honesty and transparency.”

Herren is insistent: “Manipulation is no longer accepted by the general public as in the long run, this would result in business and society as a whole losing interest in sport.”

Herren’s job is to be ahead of the game and see what potential attackers are thinking. He says: “Cyber attackers are trying to map the infrastructure so they look with whom is connected. They’re going to attack and try to identify where there could be the weak spot, the open door that part of this infrastructure where they could come through.”

A typical cyber assault on a team member using their laptop in a hotel room might be to activate their camera and microphone to make a movie and then send it back to them. If that happens to be an engineer crucial to the operations of a team and that engineer has been watching an embarrassing pornographic movie then the engineer is potentially compromised.

It’s obvious what happens next, especially if a big betting organisation is involved and wants to influence the result of a race.

Herren says: “Because the door is open they can apply pressure on and they know all the tactics of how to approach somebody. We know from the behavior of this attackers who is behind it so we can actually identify the groups because they’re all using the same techniques.” Herren says no one will ever admit they have been targeted because that will often mean confessing to a sad story.

Herren is very concerned that engineers and mechanics, who can have a big effect on a team’s performance, could be targeted by hackers in team hotels at races.

And any discussion about that quickly returns to the outcome of the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. A mystery never solved and now buried conveniently in the annals of Formula One history.

The closing laps of the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix were some of the most bungling ever seen in Formula One history. Did the Mercedes-AMG pit crew turn into a bunch of incompetents on the scale of a Carry-On film or was it just rank carelessness? Or was a team member hacked and threatened with exposure of his darkest secrets if he did not co-operate with what the hackers wanted?

What happened was certainly strange. On lap 61, Jack Aitken, in a Williams, was trundling round in 15th place. Then Aitken spun off at the final turn and shed his front wing which partially blocked the track, necessitating a safety car as marshals rushed to remove it from the track.

Mercedes-AMG pitted both its drivers on lap 63 and in the chaos of two cars arriving at virtually the same time, George Russell was sent out with Valtteri Bottas’s front tyres. Bottas was sent back out with the same tyres when the pit crew couldn’t locate his tyres. Russell was then forced to pit again to fit his own tyres.

When the dust had settled Bottas was fourth and Russell fifth, behind Perez, Ocon and Stroll in the podium positions. The safety car ended on lap 69 and Russell, even after two stops, on fresh tyres, looked like he could win. He was able to pass Bottas, Stroll and Ocon, and by lap 73 was second, chasing Perez for the lead of the race.

Bottas was nowhere. Just as it looked certain Russell would overtake Perez and win, Russell’s car suffered a rear left tyre puncture on lap 78, forcing him to pit yet again. The mystery is that there didn’t appear to be a puncture on Russell’s car.

Rumours persist that this was no accident and that a Mercedes staffer manipulated what happened.

Herren says: “They’re going to the weakest point in the weekend. The bad behaviour of some of the actors.”

The mystery of Bahrain will never be solved. Mercedes-AMG dealt with the incident and requests for more information has fallen on deaf ears.