due to evidence of widespread doping by russian athletes, wada recommended that russian athletes be barred from participating in the 2016 rio olympics and paralympics. analysts said they believed the hack was in part an act of retaliation against whistleblowing russian athlete yuliya stepanova, whose personal information was released in the breach. in august 2016, wada revealed that their systems had been breached, explaining that hackers from fancy bear had used an international olympic committee (ioc)-created account to gain access to their anti-doping administration and management system (adams) database. the hackers then used the website fancybear.net to leak what they said were the olympic drug testing files of several athletes who had received therapeutic use exemptions, including gymnast simone biles, tennis players venus and serena williams and basketball player elena delle donne. the hackers honed in on athletes who had been granted exemptions by wada for various reasons. subsequent leaks included athletes from many other countries.