Was Pinnacle Sports outage due to electricity problems or something more sinister?


Written On  4/14/11 By Recentpoker.com staff writer  Lenny Wasman :

ANOTHER DDoS ATTACK?

Was Pinnacle Sports outage due to electricity problems or something more sinister?

The news earlier this week that Paddy Power online gambling sites had been subjected to a massive but unsuccessful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack  has again alerted the industry to this pernicious evil, and this has now been accentuated by reports of another assault on an online gambling site.

This time it was Pinnacle Sports, which was taken down for over 12 hours Wednesday in what initially appeared to be a power outage at its Curacao base.

However, reports differ, presumably because initially the company tried to put a brave face on a troubling issue.

Some information portals – the respected Sports Betting Review among them – pegged the fault as an unsuccessful DDoS assault, and quoted Pinnacle management in doing so.

Two different attacks in a week may herald another round of these criminal assaults, which are usually accompanied by attempts to extort money from the operators concerned.

It is not known if any such blackmail attempts were made in either of the two cases this week, but site operators are now aware and alert to the possibilities of further DDoS activity in the business.