Tokyo 2020 Olympics website breached by cyber-attack ahead of forum on cyber security

The website of the Organizing Committee of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics likely suffered a cyber-attack as the committee and public could not access the site for more than 12-hours, the committee said Thursday.

According to the committee, the website crashed on Wednesday evening around 8:30 p.m. local time and access could not be gained until Thursday morning at around 9 a.m.

"We think we suffered a cyber-attack. It is an extremely serious issue," a senior member of the organizing committee told a press gathering Thursday, with reports also stating that multiple coordinated attempts to connect to the website that deactivated the committee's site had been recorded.

The company hosting and operating the committee's servers said they disabled the system following an unusual amount of traffic, which they deemed was a deliberate attempt to crash the servers.

The committee and the government said they are as yet unaware of the motive for the attack and investigations are currently underway.

Following a similar attack on the 2012 London Olympics website, Tokyo officials said last month they would bolster their efforts to combat cyber-attacks, by establishing a dedicated entity to train personnel to deal with digital information gathering to be launched next year.

The attack has garnered a great deal of media attention due to the fact that an international conference on cyber security, backed by the World Economic Forum, will be held in Okinawa, Japan's southern most prefecture, from the weekend.

The conference's agenda has been based around the central theme of how to effectively guard against potential cyber attacks in the period before and during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Endit