Paris is anticipating a flurry of cyber-attacks due to the upcoming Olympics, but have been preparing themselves for battle.

The so-called cyber-warriors have been training hard for the upcoming Games taking place this summer, but they hope to stay out of the limelight this round. Instead of making onto a podium, cyber specialists hope to keep the games secure from threat actors.

The Paris Games organisations’ cybersecurity team is concerned about teenage hackers taking advantage of the plethora of websites and booking sites, to state-affiliated actors camouflaging their activities via the biggest sporting event in the world.

In a press conference on Friday, Vincent Strubel, the head of France’s national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI), said that the country is “preparing for everything” as they expect the level of cyber-threats to be “unprecedented” this year.

“There will be cyberattacks during the Games and the Paralympics,” he told reporters. “Some won’t be serious. Some will be serious but won’t have an impact on the Games. And perhaps there will be some that are serious and liable to have an impact on the Games.”

To train, ANSSI hired ethical hackers to test their websites for different threats – as the threat is “unprecedented”, the training as been too, according to Strubel.

“There are 500 sites, competition venues and local collectives, and we’ve tested them all.”

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ANSSI has been working with Cisco and Eviden, as well as using AI, to test different threats across their websites and IT system.

While Strubel did not name specific attackers, French President Emmanuel Macron said he expected that Russia would target the Paris Olympics with a cyber-attack.

The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang were targeted by a computer virus called Olympic Destroyer, which western nations blamed on Russian-affiliated threat actors. While Russia denied these accusations, the US has since indicted six Russian spy hackers for a hacking campaign that included the Games as a target.