World Cup Betting Sites Go Offline
June 13, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Several UK-based online betting Web sites were hit by brief outages Tuesday morning interrupting wagering on the World Cup, according to Netcraft (netcraft.com). Sites operated by BetDirect and UKBetting were offline for periods of between 45 minutes and two hours and it is still unclear whether heavy traffic was a factor in today’s outages. In the past, betting sites have been targeted by DDoS extortionists during major sporting events. Industry observers say as much as $1.84 billion could be wagered on this year’s World Cup, five times the betting volume for the 2002 event. Netcraft says that industries conducting large volumes of transactions are frequent targets of DDoS attacks, which are usually preceded by a request for payment from companies who claim they have the ability to prevent outages. If no payment is made, a DDoS attack follows.
Previous high-volume wagering events that faced outages include EuroCup 2004 and the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.
