First Legalized Online Gambling Website May
Have Been Hacked
August 31, 2010
The first story to come out
of the B.C. was that PlayNow.com crashed due to high volume by eager
gamers ready to start playing on the first legal online gambling website
in North America. Now, the New Democratic Party is coming forth to say
that hackers might have devised a very intricate strategy which allowed
other online gamblers logged onto the site on July 15, 2010 to see the
personal information (names, contact information and, in some cases,
credit card and bank information) of 130 players.
PlayNow.com employee,
Elizabeth Denham vows that the online gambling site will not be back-up
until the problems are rectified and she has asked BCLC to pay for a
credit monitoring service to ensure the online gambling victims of the
breach won't be besieged by hoaxers. For now, everything is being done
to correct the embarrassing dilemma as soon as possible. Especially
since British Canadian’s under careful watch by the rest of the world
while they attempt to legalize an already controversial program in
online gambling.
Vaclav Vincalek, the head
of Pacific Coast Information Systems, feels that the criminals behind
this used a hacker tool called “Botnets.” Because Botnets would have
just looked as an overwhelming number of hits to the online gambling
site, the corporation might not have been recognized as hacking.
Setting up a botnet
involves sending out a computer virus that lies quiescent in a network
of home computers. The hacker then triggers the virus and all those
computers begin sending normal looking information and requests to one
target online gambling website at the same time, overwhelming its
servers. This would then allow online gambling to suddenly become a
playground for hackers, and the player’s victims to Botnet.
