The head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority has revealed the organisation last year repelled cyber attacks from state-sponsored Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, predicting the threat of further online assaults to rise if Russia is banned from next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.

The revelation comes two days after software giant Microsoft said its threat intelligence centre found at least 16 national anti-doping agencies and sporting bodies had been targeted by the hackers in September in attacks that began shortly before the World Anti-Doping Agency announced doping compliance proceedings against Russia over "inconsistencies" in historical lab test data provided to WADA from Moscow.

Russian hackers have previously accessed the medical records of Australian athletes by breaking into WADA's database. Credit:Shutterstock

The action against Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, could again lead to it being stripped of WADA compliance and the country’s athletes potentionally barred from competing under their nation’s flag in Tokyo next year.

ASADA chief executive David Sharpe was a vocal critic of WADA’s decision in September 2018 to lift a suspension on RUSADA three years after the first of two reports by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren into systemic and state-backed doping in Russia.