Man Sentenced in Extortion of Online Gambling Websites
An unidentified man from Frankfurt, Germany has been sentenced for his role in attempting to extort monies from at least six online gambling websites during the 2010 World Cup by threatening DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.
Distributed Denial of Service attacks attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Typically this includes saturating the target machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.
Over the past decade, online gambling websites were among the first targets of DDoS due to their vulnerability coupled with massive cash incentives for the culprits, many of whom were based out of Russia and Eastern European countries.
In 2006, one Russian gang forced British bookmakers to pay out $4m in blackmail money.
The unidentified man reportedly used a rented Russian botnet to demand 2,500 euros from each of the bookmakers. Only three paid.
The man will face a 34-month sentence and 350,000 euros fine.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
