22-02-2008 Hacker botnet attacks online gamling sites

Shadowserver.org reported that more than 30 gambling sites were recently down due to Distributed Denial of Service attacks caused by a botnet of hacker-compromised computers in the United States and Russia. Casino City confirmed that Full Tilt Poker, Titan Poker, Virgin Games and Party Poker were among the gambling sites attacked.

"A botnet is a network of compromised computers that act as drones under the common control central server," said Shadowserver director Andre M. DiMino. "DDos attacks are always going to be out there. In the past, they were used to show the might of the botnet. But the real purpose for botnets now is fraud and identity theft."

In other news, APACS, the credit card industry association, said online gambling was the sector hit the hardest by credit card fraudsters in 2007 with a total of £12.7 million lost by online gambling sites to them. Clive Hawkswood, CEO of the Remote Gambling Association, said it was difficult to verify the numbers as most gambling firms don't want to admit to have suffered such problems.