WADA asks Russian government to help fight hackers

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has asked the Russian government to fight against hacker attacks, the doping agency's director general Olivier Niggli has said.

Cyber hackers Fancy Bear published a new batch of documents on Wednesday on their website containing "confidential athlete data of 25 athletes, from eight countries, into the public domain," reports Tass.

Among those athletes are 14 medal winners at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. WADA claims that Russian hackers were behind the cyber attack.

"We condemn this criminal activity and have asked the Russian Government to do everything in their power to make it stop," Niggli said.

He added that continued cyber-attacks "seriously undermine the work that is being carried out to rebuild a compliant anti-doping program in Russia".

"Given this intelligence and advice, WADA has no doubt that these ongoing attacks are being carried out in retaliation against the agency, and the global anti-doping system, because of our independent investigations that exposed state-sponsored doping in Russia," Niggli noted.

The first batch of documents was published by the hacker group on Tuesday, containing personal data of four American athletes - gymnast Simone Biles, tennis players Serena and Venus Willians, basketball player Elena Delle Donne.

--IANS

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