World Rugby admit they suffered cyber-attack

World Rugby have admitted that one of the training websites suffered a security breach and that data was compromised.

The incident occurred on the 3rd of May, when World Rugby became aware of unauthorised access to our database of education and training portal accounts. Users of the portal have been told to change their passwords as a result and to be wary of any suspicious activity on their account and to avoid clicking or downloading any suspicious emails sent to their email account.

The sports body were at pains to point out that the main website was unaffected by the breach.

Upon publishing, the training website portals remain unavailable.

An official statement reads: “The affected database contains information relating to education and training history with World Rugby and the breach was isolated to subscriber first name, email address and encrypted (hashed) password, which have not been compromised. There was no attempted breach of the entirely separate www.worldrugby.org website or any other World Rugby digital platform.

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“World Rugby takes the protection of data extremely seriously, partners with industry experts and aligns with best-practice. It acted immediately to determine the nature and scope of the issue, investigate how the incident occurred and to take steps to prevent a repeat situation. This included immediately suspending the affected websites.

“World Rugby also immediately contacted affected subscribers immediately via email, detailing the level of information that was accessed and recommending that subscribers should change their password, as should be undertaken regularly in line with security best-practice. World Rugby is confident that the breach cause was identified, isolated and remedied.

“World Rugby has proactively been updating the relevant regulators throughout and would like to reassure its training and education community that all possible steps have been taken to protect subscriber data and mitigate any repeat.”