Russian hackers have published documents showing that US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles along with Serena and Venus Williams were granted Therapeutic Use Exemptions for banned substances by WADA.
The release of the information, by a group known as 'Fancy Bear', came following a hack of WADA servers.
WADA have released a statement explaining what happened.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirms that a Russian cyber espionage group operator by the name of Tsar Team (APT28), also known as Fancy Bear, illegally gained access to WADA’s Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) database via an International Olympic Committee (IOC)-created account for the Rio 2016 Games. The group accessed athlete data, including confidential medical data -- such as Therapeutic Use Exemptions delivered by International Sports Federations (IFs) and National Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs) -- related to the Rio Games; and, subsequently released some of the data in the public domain, accompanied by the threat that they will release more.
While it is an evolving situation, at present, we believe that access to ADAMS was obtained through spear phishing of email accounts; whereby, ADAMS passwords were obtained enabling access to ADAMS account information confined to the Rio 2016 Games. At present, we have no reason to believe that other ADAMS data has been compromised.
Quadruple Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles was one of the high profile athletes named in the release of information. On Twitter, Biles confirmed that she was been granted a medical exemption for a drug used to treat ADHD.
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) September 13, 2016
Having ADHD, and taking medicine for it is nothing to be ashamed of nothing that I'm afraid to let people know.
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) September 13, 2016
The Russian government has denied any involvement in the hack.
