888 Poker Suffers DDoS Attacks

A recent string of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks among online poker sites has claimed another victim, with 888 Poker confirming its status as the latest poker room to fall prey to the service disruptions that severely hamper operations and frustrate players.

The Twitter account of 888 Poker makes mention of service problems beginning on September 5, with another post the following day apologizing for the outages and advising players to email support to rectify inconveniences and lost tickets. The server issues were plaguing the site yet again over the weekend, with 888 Poker informing loyal customers that its IT experts were working to restore operations to normal as soon as possible.

A distributed denial of service attack occurs when a server or website is flooded with incoming messages. The overloaded network is slowed down or shut down, resulting in interruption of service and operations.

The DDoS attacks at 888 Poker came just days after a triumvirate of top poker sites reported similar issues. PokerStars, Party Poker and Americas Cardroom were also victimized with service disruptions of late, forcing the cancellations of some key tournaments.

Unknown Attackers

There has been plenty of speculation as to who might be behind the distributed denial of service attacks that have become much too frequent in the online poker industry. Previous service disruptions were met with ransom demands by the internet deviants, with payment requested in cryptocurrency so that the miscreants could remain anonymous and avoid detection.

It is believed by many that demands for ransom have also accompanied the latest attacks. However, the victimized poker sites have made no such mention of that, perhaps hoping to both dissuade the DDoS attackers from further shenanigans, as well as to avoid instilling fear into players.

Winning Poker Network CEO Phil Nagy stated last year that a spate of DDoS attacks at Americas Cardroom were perhaps the doings of a rival poker site. He claims to have been told that a competing poker room was behind the attacks by a Twitch viewer who stated as much in the chat box of the streaming platform. That claim has never been verified.

ChampionChips

The recent attack at 888 Poker came in the midst of its [geolink href=”https://www.pokernewsreport.com/888-giving-away-hundreds-of-seats-to-championchips-events-22680″]ChampionChips tournament series[/geolink], a micro stakes poker festival that features large prize pools compared to the low buy-ins. That followed the method of operation of many previous DDoS attacks at other poker sites, the attacks seemingly carried out during key MTT series’ that were advertised heavily by the victimized poker rooms.

ChampionChips ran from Sept. 2-9 at 888 Poker and consisted of 18 events with buy-ins as low as $1. There were apparently a number of overlays during the series, likely due to the fact that players couldn’t connect to the site sometimes, while other times the poker client became frozen due to the DDoS attacks.

Online poker players who may be leary of logging on and playing at their favorite poker rooms due to the recent service disruptions can rest assured that the poker sites tend to be quite generous in providing refunds whenever the DDoS attackers are successful. Not playing means that the attackers win, and nobody wants to give in to such terrorizing tactics.