For instance, the American soccer fans were advised by U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center not to bring any mobile phone, laptop, PDA and other electronic devices for the World Cup event in Russia. As these devices will be targeted for hacking by malicious cyber criminals and even by the Russian government.

Best Practice for American World Cup Travellers

In the world of wireless connectivity, it is hard to imagine leaving these devices at home before travelling to big events like the World Cup. But the US officials did make some leeway and stated that the best practice for World Cup travelers are to use different mobile device from the usual one and remove the battery when not in use.

To the US officials, the World Cup traveler should not think that his/her devices are insignificant as compared to the corporate and government officials and thus being spared from hacking. These drastic precautionary measures and mentality may stem from the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 US presidential election or simply by the perceptions of the state-sponsored hackings associated with Russia.

The Empire strikes back

England football hooligans may have some bad blood with theRussian hooligans as seen back in the Euro 2016. Probably, similar unpleasant incidents were experienced by the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) with their Russian counterparts as well which led the department to “providing expert cyber security advice to the (UK) Football Association ahead of their departure to Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.”

Moreover, England soccer fans bound for Russia were advised to bring “burner” devices or temporary devices that can be discarded when not in use to minimize the personal data breaches from alleged Russian malicious hackers.

Taking it too far or basic precautions?

At the first glance, perhaps both US and UK are too extreme on the cyber-security for their own travelers to Russia for the World Cup 2018. There might be some truth to it, but rather it can be seen as basic precautions to take in an unknown cyber environment.

For instances, the travelers should try not to connect to any untrusted public WiFi, and if there is no password protected WiFi, just don’t connect to it. In addition, individual should not use any untrusted sources of thumb, flash drives and plugged them to their laptops. In hindsight, all these practices are rather basic in protecting personal data and if the worst scenario happened – like the individual mobile device being hacked, then the user should switch off and change passwords at any given opportunities.

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