Xpressbet: Company Victim of Cyberterrorism

yep - tvg also - and maybe twinspires too but in typical CD Corp fashion, no response to a possible problem

ADW Company Says Cyberterrorists Caused Service Outage
by Ray Paulick

.com said an outage to its advance deposit wagering platform, lasting several hours on Saturday, was caused by cyberterrorists who have been increasing the frequency and intensity of organized cyber attacks on different ADW companies in recent months.

Xpressbet’s outage, which the company said was the result of coordinated and sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, did not lead to any personal or financial data being compromised, according to a statement from the Stronach Group-owned company.

Another ADW company, TVG, experienced what it said was a shorter service outage on Saturday, preventing both telephone and online wagers approximately two hours prior to the $1-million Pacific Classic, a race the Betfair-owned company sponsors. A company official said a “network issue” was the source of TVG’s technical problems. It posted the following note on Twitter around 8 p.m. EDT Saturday.



The Xpressbet outage began around 7 p.m. EDT, two hours before the Pacific Classic. The shutdown effected other ADW websites for which Xpressbet provides a framework.

In its statement, Xpressbet described the DDoS attacks as a “form of cyberterrorism in which a website is flooded with thousands of unique visits, solely intended to force the website offline.”

Ron Luniewski, president of Xpressbet, said the company has filed a report with the FBI, giving them facts and information about the attack. “They’ll look for patterns to see if they are similar to other attacks,” Luniewski said. He said the online company is constantly under cyber attacks “at varying levels of sophistication” but that “in the last couple of weeks they’ve become more sophisticated. We are now getting some indications these are the same guys that shut down the largest ISP in the United Kingdom several weeks ago.”

Last month, cyberterrorists targeted four Atlantic City, N.J., online casino gaming sites with similar DDoS attacks, shutting them down sporadically just before the Fourth of July weekend. A law enforcement official told NJ.com the cyber attacks were followed by threats of more powerful invasions of the network systems unless a “Bitcoin ransom” was paid – a reference to digital currency. The report did not indicate the amount of the ransom or whether it was paid.

“We are still trying to question the who and the why,” said Luniewski of Saturday’s cyber attack. “We’ve heard nothing – no extortion.”

Luniewski said Xpressbet is constantly upgrading its security protocol. “They ratchet up their attacks. We ratchet up our defense, and we will continue to do so,” he said. “We are using the same ISP the Googles and Yahoos of the world use. You’re never sure how they are going to come after you.”


Statement from Xpressbet.com about Saturday’s service outage, the result of a cyber attack


Combined handle from all ADW companies on Saturday’s Pacific Classic card was down $874,263.10 this year, from $4,311,465.60 in 2014 to $3,437,202.50 in 2015 – a decline of 20 percent. Handle from all sources (on-track, ADW, intra-state and inter-state simulcasting) declined by $1,622,950 for the day, from $21,008,870 in 2014 to $19,385,920 in 2015 – a drop of 7.7 percent.

TwinSpires, a Churchill Downs ADW, did not reply to a message seeking comment on whether its online wagering system was under attack. TwinSpires was the victim of an August 2012 security breach in which the names, email addresses, date of birth and encrypted Social Security numbers of about 20 percent of its customers were accessed by hackers.