Gambling sites copped one-third of all network attacks in Q3

Wednesday 6th of December 2017

Over a third of all ‘network layer attacks’ in the third quarter of 2017 were targeted at online gambling sites and related services, according to a report from Imperva Incapsula.

A network layer attack is an assault against either the network or transport layers (OSI layers 3 and 4), with the goal of causing network saturation by expending much of the available bandwidth.

Incapsula said these type of attacks in the gambling industry is common, as the sites are reliant on web revenue and are exposed to extortion attempts. Additionally, the websites are highly competitive and are commonly targeted by rival companies.

“The online gaming industry was also frequently targeted, although in this case the attacks typically originate from users either attempting to influence a game’s outcome or just to vent their frustrations.”

The company also noted that there were a number of attacks targeting cryptocurrency exchanges and services in the quarter.

“This was likely related to a recent spike in the price of bitcoin, which more than doubled in the span of the quarter,” said the company.

Incapsula provides solutions to online businesses, offering DDos protection, website security, content delivery networks and load balancers for websites.

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