{"id":50037,"date":"2017-05-09T18:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T01:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=50037"},"modified":"2017-05-09T17:35:38","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T00:35:38","slug":"chinese-authorities-launch-massive-ddos-attacks-hong-kong-online-gambling-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/chinese-authorities-launch-massive-ddos-attacks-hong-kong-online-gambling-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Chinese Authorities Launch Massive DDoS Attacks on Hong Kong Online Gambling Sites?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scores of online gambling websites based in Hong Kong were battered by a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the week of April, according to US-based Arbor Security, which monitors the web for DDoS attack data.<\/p>\n

\"Hong
For seven days at the beginning of April, Hong Kong became the ground zero of DDoS attacks throughout the world, but why? (Image: HackRead)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between April 6 and 13, hackers apparently based in China<\/a> flooded the bandwidth of countless gambling sites with a massive influx of traffic, knocking them offline.<\/p>\n

The events were striking and unusual, according to Arbor, because for those seven days Hong Kong was the top destination in the world for such attacks, a dubious honor almost always reserved for the United States.<\/p>\n

Extortion Suspected<\/b><\/h2>\n

It was also noteworthy, said Arbor, because \u201ccountry-level activity\u201d often denotes geopolitical motivation, i.e, attacks directed so intently at websites of a single territory can be an indication of cyber warfare organized on a state-level. It\u2019s a notion, however, that Kirk Soluk, manager of the company\u2019s threat intelligence team, rules out.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c…the emergence of multiple, different gambling\/gaming targets leads us to believe that DDoS extortion is the most likely motivation,\u201d he concluded in a blog on the Arbor website this week.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a reasonable conclusion. After all, hackers have sought to hold online gambling websites to ransom since the very early days of the industry.<\/p>\n

Sports betting<\/a> sites are particularly vulnerable because they are hopelessly reliant on major sporting events for large chunks of their revenues and may be have little choice but to pay a small ransom when deliberately targeted during these periods.<\/p>\n

Severe Punishment Promised<\/b><\/h2>\n

But we wonder how up to speed Arbor is on Chinese gambling regulatory issues. Probably not at all, and why should it be?<\/p>\n

Does it know, for example, that the first of the Hong Kong attacks came just five days after China\u2019s Public Security Minister <\/b>Guo Shengkun promised \u201csevere punishment\u201d for gambling operators targeting Chinese citizens on the mainland?<\/p>\n

And does it know that the only legal and licensed Hong Kong-based online operator is the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), and therefore any other online gambling site based in Hong Kong is unlicensed and a legitimate target for the Chinese government? In fact, according to a statement by the HKJC in 2014, unlicensed operators have links to organized crime and therefore illegal online gambling is akin to a \u201cblood crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the nature of DDoS attacks means they could have been orchestrated from anywhere in the world and attackers were simply harnessing internet-connected devices from within China.<\/p>\n

Or they could have come from within China, orchestrated by the government, which had little motivation to disguise the source. We may never know.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scores of online gambling websites based in Hong Kong were battered by a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the week of April, according to US-based Arbor Security, which monitors the web for DDoS attack data. Between April 6 and 13, hackers apparently based in China flooded the bandwidth of countless gambling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":50038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,21,19],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDid Chinese Authorities Launch Massive DDoS Attacks on Hong Kong Online Gambling Sites?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hong Kong-based online gambling sites suffer DDOS attacks originating in China. 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