EUROBET.IT SUFFERS “HUGE ATTACK” WITH HACKERS DEMANDING $80K RANSOM IN BITCOIN

Major Italian-facing betting site eurobet.it has suffered a serious attack by hackers who have demanded $80K worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to stop.

A message on a twitter account called eurobet.it.Dods read: “we attacked your website eurobet.it. You have to pay $ 80,000 bitcoin. We won’t stop until you pay.”

Apparently, the botnet attack has involved thousands of sites and providers in what is being described as a “huge attack” against Eurobet.it.

A serious, complex botnet attack

Though, at first, the attack against Eurobet, which started on Tuesday, seemed to be a classic DDoS – where a site is simply overwhelmed by traffic, as the hours went by it became clear the attack was much more complicated and serious.

Hackers seem to have spoofed the IP addresses of Eurobet, attacking several Italian providers, large, medium and small. Those providers then could only try and absorb traffic – something not possible without using up huge resources – or block all traffic being directed to the site.

It is thought that Neustar, a US company offering DDoS mitigation services, was enlisted by one of the Italian providers to help absorb traffic, and over the course of the attack handled 300 Gbit of instantaneous traffic. Supersnap, TIM and other datacentres are also said to have been involved.

Lasting damage for Eurobet, even after attack mitigated

The problem for Eurobet is that, because the hackers spoofed its IP addresses, the attacks on other sites and providers seemed to be coming from Eurobet. The Eurobet team quickly established this was not the case, as their servers didn’t generate any suspicious activity, there was almost zero traffic out of their network at the height of the attack, and some of the IP addresses seen to be attacking were not assigned to any location and never started an outgoing connection.

Because many sites and providers will have seen the attack as coming from Eurobet IPs, they will have blocked them – meaning that, even after the attack has been dealt with – Eurobet will be left suffering major damage, as customers and potential customers can’t reach their site.

AYO.NEWS says:

This is a real problem for Eurobet. In this kind of sophisticated IP spoofing attack, the victim is “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” Make the payment and 1) there’s no guarantee they will stop the attack anyway, 2) it will encourage future attacks and 3) it will be a big financial hit. Don’t pay and the attack continues, with even the action taken by providers to try to stop the attack damaging the site’s reputation and future operations.