DDoS attacks on online gambling operators becoming more frequent
News on 3 Nov 2015
News on 3 Nov 2015
Online gambling numbers that operators should ponder include the fact that 9 in 20 online companies are targeted by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks; 3 out of 4 that are attacked are attacked more than once; 9 out of 10 sites that have been targeted in a DDoS assault were hit in the last 12 months; and 1 in those 10 have been hit in the last week.
So claims an interesting article and infographic in the publication Daze Info this week, warning online operators to be on their guard against the increasing incidence of criminal activity that can cost companies around $40,000 an hour or more in lost business if they are unprepared.
The article claims that research findings indicate that up to fifty percent of DDoS attacks are launched by, or prompted through, commercial competitors.
“Since 60 percent of online gaming such as poker or betting on horse races or sporting events is real-time in nature, there’s no room for even a half-second latency on a gambling website,” DazeInfo observes. “A half-second latency can easily be achieved by a competitor with $100 to spend on access to a botnet.
“If you’re running a successful online gambling business, chances are you aren’t doing it with a WordPress template and a hosting package from GoDaddy. Since gambling sites require major customization, that very often means they’re operating unsecured proprietary, non-HTTPS custom protocols, leaving them vulnerable to DDoS attacks,” the article notes, going on to give recent examples of online gambling operators who have been targeted.
One company was hammered with a five vector DDoS attack that peaked at 100 Gbps, mitigated only by professional DDoS protection service provider Incapsula, whilst in July this year four New Jersey online casinos were targeted by DDoS attacks in the same day.
DazeInfo says that online gambling operators have three main things that need to be protected: financial information, site uptime, and site speed, and that requires professional infrastructure shielding.
“With infrastructure protection, as soon as an attack is detected, your DDoS mitigation service will reroute all traffic to a network of scrubbing servers that will allow legitimate traffic through to the site without interruption, while bouncing attack traffic before it reaches your server.
“Not only does this protect your uptime, site speed, and data and information, but it also keeps you from paying for unwanted traffic or getting your traffic forwarded into an internet black hole by your internet service provider,” the article advises, recommending that operators review their counter measures carefully before it’s too late.
