Updated with confirmation of attacks:

In what could be the first of many attacks in the quest for Olympic hacking gold, potential state-sponsored hackers have targeted the Winter Olympic Games being held in PyeongChang, South Korea, taking down the main ticketing site for the games.

The first major attack occurred Friday during the opening ceremony for the games. It caused the ticketing site to go down for 12 hours, preventing visitors from accessing and printing out tickets they had purchased both for the opening ceremony itself and for sporting events scheduled for the event.

Officials confirmed the attack to the New York Times, which said it took down internet access and telecasts, grounded broadcasters’ drones and brought down the website. Interestingly, a report from Cisco Systems Inc.’s Talos threat intelligence unit said the attackers appeared to avoid actually destroying the computers, even though it was apparent they had the ability to do so.

There is also some suggestion that a planned Intel Corp. drone show, scheduled for the ceremony but instead replaced with prerecorded footage, may have also been affected by the attacks, though officials didn’t reference that possibility. Reuters noted that it’s “not clear whether failure to deploy drones as part of the programme during the two-hour opening ceremony was in any way related to the system problems.”

Hacks targeting the Olympics first emerged Feb. 7. when security researchers at McAfee released a report detailing multiple phishing attempts targeted at officials. “With the upcoming Olympics, we expect to see an increase in cyberattacks using Olympics-related themes,” the McAfee researchers said. “In similar past cases, the victims were targeted for their passwords and financial information. In this case the adversary is targeting the organizations involved in the Winter Olympics by using several techniques to make it more tempting to open the weaponized document.”

It’s not clear who’s behind the cyberattack during the opening ceremony as officials remained tight-lipped. But multiple reports have pointed fingers at Russia, given that the International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes competing for their country over doping accusations.

Security research John Hultquist from FireEye Inc. is reported to have said that he had seen Russian hackers targeting Olympic-related groups in the lead-up to the event. But Russia itself fervently denied any suggestion of hacking.

Despite apparent détente that has resulted in joint teams from the disputed Peninsula, North Korea also remains a likely suspect in the hacking given its longstanding cyberattacks against its democratic neighbor to the South over previous decades.

Whoever is behind the attacks, it’s unlikely we’ve seen the last of them: The dubious gold medal winner won’t be apparent until Feb. 25, the last day of scheduled competition.

Photo: Korea.net/Wikimedia Commons