Hackers attack William Hill after $10,000 blackmail threat
Bookie deflects DoS attack on its website on eve of Cheltenham Festival.
William Hill is the latest victim of a cyber extortion wave targeting gambling websites, this time hitting the bookmaker on the eve of this week's Cheltenham horse race festival. Britain's second-biggest betting chain was hit by a barrage of data which disrupted its gambling website on 11 March. "We were targeted, but were able to take the appropriate action to minimise the nature of the disruption," said Graham Sharpe, William Hill spokesman. Police and computer security experts say organised crime is behind the growing crime wave, which typically intensifies in the days leading up to the biggest sports events of the year. The culprits targeted a variety of sites before American football's Super Bowl in January, each time demanding money or threatening to take out the sites with a crippling data barrage. And gambling sites have been on red alert with the three-day Cheltenham horse festival, kicking off one of biggest betting weeks of the year. Police call it the age-old protection racket with a cyber twist. And, the crime wave is getting worse, authorities said. "The level of intensity is higher than any we've seen before. They are increasing the force and frequency and sophistication in these attacks," said Richard Starnes, director of incident response for Cable & Wireless. Many ISPs are working with victimised sites and law enforcement to track down the culprits as larger and larger sites have been taken out for longer periods, experts said. Both police and security experts believe gangs in Eastern Europe and Russia could be behind some of the attacks. William Hill's Sharpe added that after last week's attack the company received an email the following day demanding $10,000 to avoid a repeat. "We had and continue to have no intention of dealing with demands made by blackmailers," he said. He added the extortion demand made no mention of the Cheltenham festival as a reason for the attack. He added, to his knowledge, it was the first time the site was hit. The race festival attracts big-hitting gamblers who fearlessly take on the bookmakers with bundles of cash. On the course alone, £2m pounds are bet on every race. On the net, betting fever is just as high. Online betting has been an important new growth area for high street gambling firms such as William Hill and Ladbrokes, plus a wave of new dot coms that have emerged to pounce on the market. Betfair.com, one of the world's largest online gambling operations, takes in more than £50m pounds per week in betting volume. "This is probably our biggest week," spokesman Hugh Taggart said of the meeting, which started yesterday. A sustained outage could cripple a young betting site's business operation for the year, and deflate a multi-billion-pound business sector still trying to establish the public's trust. "We are aware of the threat to the online industry," said Betfair spokesman Taggart. "At such a critical moment, we are taking every precaution to ensure the security of the site and the security of customers' funds." The crime wave, which dates back at least three years, has yet to yield any arrests. However, police see a ray of hope. Cyber extortion attempts, once the industry's dirty little secret, are now being reported to the police with greater frequency and thus increase the odds of arrests.
Reproduced from an article published by Silicon.com
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