Publication date: 21 Dec 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and social distancing measures caused engagement in online gaming and gambling to sore. This rise attracted attention from hackers, and DDoS attacks on gambling and betting websites have increased dramatically. According to the Nexusguard Q3 2020 Threat Report, there was a 287% increase in total DDoS attacks in the third quarter this year compared to the same period last year. Nearly 77% of all cyber attacks targeted online gaming and gambling industries. Earlier this year, in April, an entire study on the issue was released. According to this study, DDoS attacks at that time targeted mainly online learning and educational websites. A similar situation was also observed in the e-commerce market: cyberattacks on e-commerce websites almost tripled. Bookmakers were among the top 5 businesses which experienced the worst client losses.

What is a DDoS attack?

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and make the resource unavailable to its intended users. There can be several reasons for DDoS attacks: from personal animosity or entertainment to political protest or blackmail.