At the end of April, a series of continuous DDoS attacks hit Americas Cardroom (ACR), an online poker site and it’s Winning Poker Network (WPN), which continued until May 1. According to a series of ACR tweets, it was reported that the website will be under scheduled maintenance from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, but a later tweet revealed that ACR was under a DDoS attack forcing them to pause the tournaments.
This tweet brought outrage to many players and some requested reimbursements for the day’s tournaments. Users also accused ACR of lying about DDoS attacks, information security researchers said. However, the attacks continued until the next day (April 25). A new ACR tweet announced that all paused tournaments were canceled and players would be reimbursed accordingly.
Information security experts commented that on the same day there was a break in the attacks, which allowed the company to resume its service. However, on April 26, ACR reported that they had faced a new series of DDoS attacks and that all tournaments would be paused. Later, the company canceled all the tournaments stopped once more.
On the 27th, ACR apologized for the inconvenience caused, also announced the cancellation of all events until 8:00 p.m. M. ET, meanwhile, his information security team tried to mitigate the DDoS attacks. But the attackers continued to target ACR until April 28.
On April 29, ACR reported via twitter that DDoS attacks had been mitigated and that all tournaments were underway, but were hit by a new wave of attacks. “We are experiencing a new DDOS attack, our information security experts are working to mitigate it, however, we have stopped all the tournaments,” said ACR.
The attack forced him to cancel his MDS tournament (“Million Dollar Sundays”) to ensure a fair playing environment for all players.
From April 30 to May 1, ACR kept tweeting about continuous DDoS attacks, canceling and reimbursing the tournaments.
So far the official website (americascardroom.eu) was still offline, leading to the conclusion that they are still facing DDoS attacks.
Information security professionals are not yet clear who is behind these massive DDoS attacks, it is clear that cyber attacks against the gaming industry are on the rise. Last September, Americas Cardroom suffered a series of massive DDoS attacks forcing the company to interrupt all ongoing tournaments. In this incident, the attacker demanded ransom from the company to stop attacking its servers.
Also, a few days ago, the world’s largest rental DDoS platform, Webstresser.org, was closed and its administrators were arrested. The platform was also used to carry out cyber attacks in games and other high-profile industries.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
