An odd and disturbing incident took place over the weekend in New Jersey, when four of the online casino gaming sites in the state were attacked. New Jersey is one of only three states in the US that offers online casino and poker gaming, with the state now becoming the latest case of cyber-attack. Officials have reported that the attack began on Thursday July 2nd and continued until July 5th with the attacker seeking a Bitcoin ransom before the disruption would be reverted back to original service.
David Rebuck, the Director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, spoke out on the attack, stating that a minimum of four casinos were subject to the attack and had suffered from downtime. Officials are continuing to investigate the situation.
Rebuck stated that four online casinos were targets of a distributed denial of service attack which is when the network is flooded with info and makes the site inoperable. The attack lasting around 30 minutes and was immediately followed with a threat. The attacker stated that a more power and sustained attack would take place in a 24 hour time frame unless a ransom was paid in Bitcoin.
The attacker stated that the next attack would not only impact the casinos but would also hit businesses in the Atlantic City region who operate on the same network. The amount of money the attacker wanted in Bitcoin was not announced at the time of the request.
There are several groups now investigating the incident including the State Police, FBI, Division of Gaming Enforcement and the Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness of New Jersey. The last time the US was subject to a cyber-attack was last year when the Las Vegas Sands Casino was shut down after an attack on the servers and computers of the company.
According to Rebuck, officials know who the attacker is as he has done this before. Online poker sites in Atlantic City do not seem to have been affected by the attack.
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