The boss of internet security company Cloudflare has revealed that the voting platform for Eurovision came under attack in 2012. Speaking to BBC News, company founder Matthew Prince revealed that the company’s previous experience securing the websites of Turkish escorts helped protect Eurovision.
The story started in 2012, when the company discovered that around 150 Turkish escorts had signed up to Cloudflare after their websites had come under attack from a conservative group that “strongly disapproved of their activities”.
Later that year, another of Cloudflare’s clients was attacked — the digital voting platform of the Eurovision Song Contest. The BBC article notes that “the mystery cyber attackers turned out to be strangely familiar.”
Matthew Prince explained:
“If it wasn’t the same people as those attacking the Turkish escort sites, it was the same resources.”
“So because we had protected the Turkish escorts we were able to help Eurovision.
“They [the escort websites] may not seem attractive customers… but they helped us learn.”
Cloudflare’s website describes the attack in more detail, noting that the Eurovision.TV website was hit with a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack in May 2012, making it inaccessible to the public. After Cloudflare were called in, the site was soon back to normal, in time for peak Eurovision time.
Eurovision 2012 was the last time Turkey competed before withdrawing from the contest.
Loreen went on to win Eurovision 2012, with her hugely popular “Euphoria” giving Sweden its fifth win and becoming an enduring Eurovision favourite.
It seems that esc fights for freedom, not only entertainment. I hope there is a plan B in case attacks are successful. Anyway there is no shame in case attacks win.
If they were attacking Turkish escort sites then doesn’t that suggest the attack was coming from Turkey. If so doesn’t also suggest that the real reason Turkey withdrew from Eurovision is based on political and religious reasons, rather than a dislike for the current voting system which they always claim.
still in mourning over esctoday, the best fansite ever…. R.I.P. ESCtoday *snif*snif*
So if an attack was carried out successfully in the voting, what wouldve happened?
BE
I m sorry for Esc Today amazing sites with so many fans , we had more of 1000 comments of some eurovision news…..
Life’s a … e s c o r t
A lot of the eurovision websites got hit by ddos in 2012.
You could (or should?) also mention the attack on ESCToday that year.
But what happened with the JESC online voiting in 2015? They tried in 2014 and failed.