More DDOS Attacks Are Happening Against Gambling Sites

The publication Daze recently releases some statistics that should make everyone in the online gambling community sit back and take notice. They've claimed that about 45 percent of online gambling operators are hit with DDOS attacks and that about 75 percent of those attacked are done so multiple times. On top of that, 90 percent of those were attacked in the past year, and 10 percent were targets inside of the past seven days, on average.

The Point of DDOS Attacks

Both poker sites and online casinos have been hit with these attacks, and there's a basic pattern as to how they work. Hackers threaten a site in a form of extortion by saying they can either pay the hackers a monthly fee for "protection," or they can be subject to these attacks, which hurt their profitability. Daze claims that companies can lose as much as $40,000 an hour during these attacks if they aren't properly prepared, so it's easy to see why taking the deal could be temping.

The Problem With Accepting

If you're an online casino that makes $40,000 an hour from online slots and other games, then it might seem like it makes sense to pay something like $400,000 a month to avoid these attacks. However, there's no way to guarantee that the attacks will stop, and all paying the ransom does is confirm to the hacker that you can be scared into doing what they want. From there, the threats and ransom asked can escalate, and this just makes the entire situation tons worse.

Protection For Sites

Because these DDOS attacks have sped up over the past couple of years, software companies have already started building solutions for DDOS protection that are specifically designed for the online gambling environment. This is the natural pressure of the market coming through to offer a solution when there's a problem, but there is a lot that has to be protected like financial information, the integrity of the random number generator, etc. Overall, it's a very complicated scenario, and people are probably going to see these attacks increase in frequency before things slow down and become more normal as more companies and operators adopt solutions to protect themselves from these types of assaults.

Author: GamesAndCasino