The match between Slovakia and Ukraine was in danger of being canceled

The British publication Daily Mail published an unexpected story related to the match of the 2nd round of the group stage of Euro-2024 Slovakia - Ukraine (1:2), which was held on June 21 in Düsseldorf.

On the eve of that game, experts at the Merkur Spiel Arena, where the match took place, discovered signs that pro-Russian hacker groups had attacked the soccer arena and its infrastructure.

There were fears that these groups would attempt to project unwanted messages onto screens or sabotage infrastructure in the stadium or fan zones, which could include turning off lights and halting the televised broadcast of the match. There was also speculation that hackers would attempt to play the sounds of the Russian national anthem through the stadium speakers.

As a result of the rapid response to this situation, Dutch Eye Security, a Dutch cybersecurity company, was engaged to level the potential threat, whose experts were able to prevent any desired scenarios from occurring.

"Together with our partners, we protected the availability of all connections and prevented hackers from blocking the stadium's website or the televised match," said Dutch Eye Security CTO Piet Kerckhofs.