Report: 25% of all gambling sites hit by DDoS attacks in June
Cybersecurity firm Imperva found that sites were attacked by botnets and impacted one in 10 sites
Cybersecurity firm Imperva has reported a rise in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on gambling sites in June.
This new figure showed that DDoS attacks increased and affected around one in 10 sites and occured at the same time as the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
According to the firm, this is a common trend with these kinds of attacks, as it drives customers away from their favoured platforms and towards competitors, which can lead to millions in lost revenue for a site.
Imperva noticed a similar correlation during the delayed UEFA Euro 2020 tournament last year, which saw botnet attacks spike by 96% compared to the month before the tournament. This was more prevalent when England played in the tournament with account takeover attempts two to three-times higher than average.
At a cybersecurity level, Imperva data confirmed that 60% of all application-layer DDoS attacks during Q2 lasted 15+ minutes, and 21% of all network-layer attacks lasted 1+ hours
55% of sites hit by layer 7 DDoS attacks in Q2 were attacked again 91% of network-layer DDoS targets were attacked again within 24 hours 25% of gambling sites were attacked in the final month of Q2
“E-commerce events are busy times. With online gambling sites in particular, it’s like experiencing Cyber Monday—several times a year,” Imperva product manager Nabeel Saeed said.
“A half-second delay renders a site unusable, unlike shopping where the tolerance for imperceptible delays may not make or break a sale,” Saeed added.
The statistics for June show a wider, more persistent tendency for the sector, with 40% of gaming websites experiencing attacks in the previous year, 80% of which were struck numerous times.
In all, DDoS attacks on businesses increased by more than three times in Q2 2022 compared to Q1 2022, with more than half (55%) of the studied companies seeing numerous attacks over the three months.
Yuriy Arbitman, data scientist at Imperva, said: “For gambling firms, even an hour of downtime can equate to significant amounts of lost revenue.
“If a company generates, say, £1bn in revenue per year, then a sustained DDoS attack means they’re losing approximately £115K per hour, more if it comes during a particularly popular event like Wimbledon,” he added.