Computer hackers in China have broken into the information databases of the governing bodies of two British Olympic sports and, The Times can reveal, the Olympic family in the UK has been alerted that, with the Beijing Games less than eight months away, those threatening their security may be doing so to gain an illegal competitive advantage.

The first sport targeted was GB Canoeing, which was hit in October. The other Olympic sports in Britain were immediately informed, but the IT system of the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAE) was then subject to eight attacks over a three-week period and two investigations have traced all this activity back to internet protocol (IP) addresses in China. “This wasn’t kids mucking around,” Paul King, the ABAE chief executive, said. “This was a real professional job.”

Fears that these crimes may have been staged to steal information to help the perpetrators in the Games next summer were confirmed on Wednesday in an e-mail seen by The Times, which was part of the report delivered by Synergic UK Ltd, the IT partner of GB Canoeing that carried out the investigation into the attack on the website.

The report said: “In this case the source was China and the type of attack highly sophisticated and targeted. Fortunately, the servers involved held no performance data and it is our belief that this was the information being sought.”

The review by Synergic into the security of the GB Canoeing website’s servers “worryingly exposed a lack of understanding of data security issues and the very real threats posed in the run-up to and in the Games themselves”. It also advised that “it is vital that staff are aware that there is a genuine threat to and indeed focus on gaining access to information that could be of help to the competition”.

GB Canoeing and the ABAE are confident that no critical information has been stolen. Paul Owen, the chief executive of GB Canoeing, said that if such information was what the attackers were after, they were looking in the wrong place.

King, however, explained that the attack on the ABAE systems, if more successful, could have been costly from a competitive point of view. “We have all our individual assessments for all our boxers – their strengths, their weaknesses – stored on our system,” he said. “We also hold information on the international competition.

“Take Alexey Tishchenko [the Olympic champion from Russia], for instance, who Frankie Gavin [the British lightweight who has qualified for Beijing] beat in the World Championships recently. No one had beaten him for four years and our postfight analysis – what we did to beat him that no one else had done – might well be useful.”

Despite the security investigations, no one can be sure of the motives of the hackers or even their origin. And because the IP addresses were Chinese does not necessarily rule out the possibility of another foreign national working from a Chinese address. Indeed, the systems were subject to viruses and may simply have been a victim of sabotage, although the fact that two Olympic bodies were targeted within such a short space of time has fuelled fears that this may be a crime of a sporting nature.

The British Olympic Association (BOA) confirmed yesterday that it has been sufficiently concerned to have informed the IOC. “Attention was drawn to us about this situation,” Simon Clegg, the BOA chief executive, said. “I thought we had a responsibility to share it with the Olympic family. It is a real danger when you consider how much information is held electronically. I simply don’t know who is behind this, but I am concerned about the amount of information we hold in this way.”

Owen said: “We were concerned that data had been downloaded and taken away, but we do not believe that that has been the case. And we naturally think it might be someone trying to get into our Olympic intelligence, though we have no evidence to believe that. I’ll actually be more worried about when we get to Beijing next summer. Will the phones be tapped?”

This is not the first time that Britain teams have had such a brush with next year’s hosts. The sailing team – the leading international force in their sport – have not had equipment returned to them that was confiscated by the Chinese authorities in March.

They have been renting a house in Qingdao, the sailing venue, throughout the past year and, as is their standard practice, had installed equipment to monitor weather patterns. What concerns them is not so much the value of the equipment but the value of the data to which they no longer have access. Despite requesting its return, the equipment has not been given back.

To add to that, when they were in Qingdao for the preOlympic test event in August, they discovered that Chinese officials had been looking around their accommodation during daylight hours when they were out on the water competing. The team even had security staff on the door of their house, but one of the visitors happened to be the Mayor of Qingdao – head of the organising committee for the sailing event – who insisted that he be allowed in.

Spies like us

Sports have long resorted to espionage to get the upper hand on rivals. . .

–– In the America’s Cup, the keels of boats are covered in “skirts” to prevent other teams from noting their design. In 1983, guards chased away American divers who had tried to take a peek at the keel of Australia’s entry.

–– In 2001 it was alleged that the Lions rugby team had been spied on during their tour to Australia. Before the 2003 World Cup final, the England changing-room was swept for bugging devices.

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