Wave of Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks have impaired functionality of major poker sites. Online Casino News reported that DDos attacks crippled the World pay system. This affected thousands of online casinos which rely on this system for transaction purposes. Six businesses such as full tilt poker, titan poker and cd poker were targeted by a cyber gang mainly from Russia who demanded 50 thousand Euros. Law Enforcement Agencies are stating that increased numbers of organized crime gangs are using DDos attacks for extortion purposes. Organized Crime has taken the opportunity by threatening to hack their websites if they are not paid Several Companies with high stakes in terms of revenue and customer base are forced to give in, since their revenue is over $50 thousand a week. Damage would cost more from DDo attacks.

A DDos attack impairs a website capability by attacking its web servers. This is done by flooding the servers with traffic from thousands of different locations at once. One method to implement a DDos attack is using T6poker, where remote computers which have a virus or a latent code are activated otherwise known as a “bot net”. This “bot net” can be used to target a specific site. DK Matai of MICG which monitors online hacking says that syndicates have targeted systems belonging to gambling sites.

32 different gambling sites were attacked from Feb/10-11/2009. All the above mentioned sites took counter measures to combat the attacks. The command control server operating the bot net was taken offline. However this doesn’t prevent attacks being launched from other web servers. Reasons for these attacks are unknown, but the aim is to bring the competitive sites down. This is not the first of DDos attacks. Both net attacks have attacked sports betting sites before the super bowl.

In addition, M 2G estimates damages from these attacks in October alone to be in the region of $10 billion. The agency works closely with the FBI and Britain’s Hi-tech crimes unit. In spite of effort to curtail this extortion victims don’t often report out of fear of losing customers who use the online payment system.