FBI and NCAA step up athlete cyber protection

The FBI and NCAA have launched a joint effort to protect college athletes from hackers seeking private images and using stolen material for sexual exploitation, blackmail and online harassment.

The initiative follows growing concern that athletes’ highly visible digital profiles are giving criminals more opportunities to identify targets, compromise accounts and obtain intimate photographs or videos. Attackers commonly use phishing messages, stolen or guessed passwords and PINs, and fake social-media customer service accounts that claim urgent security action is required.

Criminals may impersonate support personnel and tell athletes that an account has been compromised or requires an immediate password reset. Victims can then be directed to fraudulent pages designed to capture login credentials. Once inside an account, attackers may search messages, cloud storage, email and other linked services for sensitive material.

Stolen images can be distributed, sold or used as leverage in sextortion schemes. Victims may face demands, threats of publication, stalking and harassment. Compromised social-media accounts can also be used to publish stolen material directly to an athlete’s followers, increasing the potential reputational and emotional damage.

The NCAA will use its links with colleges and athletics departments to extend the FBI’s prevention and reporting campaign to student-athletes. The programme is intended both to reduce the chances of account compromise and to make it easier for victims to seek assistance after an attack. Neither organisation has disclosed a figure for the number of athletes believed to have been targeted by sextortion schemes.

Athletes have become particularly attractive targets as their commercial and public profiles have expanded through name, image and likeness, or NIL, opportunities. College players can now build substantial followings, promote products and operate personal brands while still competing at university level. The same visibility that supports sponsorship income also provides criminals with extensive information that can be used to design convincing attacks.

Publicly accessible details about teams, schedules, personal interests and commercial partnerships can help attackers tailor messages to individual athletes. Criminals can combine such information with credentials exposed in earlier data breaches, increasing the likelihood that a fraudulent message or password attempt will succeed.

FBI Victim Services Division assistant director Shohini Sinha has said athletes face additional pressure because they may feel responsible for protecting the reputations of their schools, teams and personal brands. That concern can give criminals greater leverage when threatening to release private material.

The campaign also seeks to overcome reluctance among victims of sexual exploitation to contact investigators. NCAA Vice-President of Enforcement Jon Duncan said the association wanted to help prevent attacks while ensuring that people affected could obtain justice and appropriate support.

The NCAA has already expanded its programmes dealing with online threats. Its monitoring system, operating since 2024, identifies abusive or threatening material directed at athletes, coaches and officials and can refer posts to social-media platforms or law-enforcement agencies. More than 15,000 abusive messages have been reported to relevant organisations since the programme began. Athletes can also opt into monitoring of direct messages.

The organisation has introduced an educational programme covering online harassment, personal safety, digital identity and ways of responding to abuse. Its broader prevention material also directs athletes and schools towards services dealing with internet exploitation, sexual violence and mental-health support.

The danger is underscored by a federal criminal case involving former University of Michigan assistant football coach Matt Weiss. Prosecutors have alleged that Weiss obtained unauthorised access to social-media, email and cloud-storage accounts belonging to more than 2,000 athletes and more than 1,300 other students or alumni between 2015 and 2023. Investigators seized thousands of intimate photographs and videos during the investigation. Weiss has pleaded not guilty to identity theft and unauthorised computer-access charges.

The scale of that case highlighted how credentials and personal information can be exploited systematically rather than through isolated attacks. It also demonstrated that private material stored outside social networks can remain vulnerable when email or cloud accounts share compromised passwords.