Favbet Blames Competitor for Hacker Attack

Favbet, an Eastern European focused bookmaker, is reeling from a Christmas Day distributed denial of services (DDoS) attack that company officials say is the work of rival operators.
The attack, which was extremely sophisticated and hit on multiple fronts, included a slew of phony e-mails to Favbet’s user base. The e-mails said that Favbet would be closed for a few days due to, “unscheduled maintenance.” Hackers also used the company’s e-mail servers to issue a series of crude missives to Favbet players.
But fake e-mails were only part of the attack.
According to a report on Russian language site, BookmakersRating.ru, the attack did serious damage to the company’s internal databases. The site says Favbet lost its main, and backup, databases.
The hackers also redirected Favbet players to the home page of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, though it doesn’t appear that the attack was politically motivated.
As bad as damage was from the initial attack, Favbet COO Sergei Efimenko said that things could have been much worse. He credits a robust internal defense system for halting the worst parts of the attack. He also said that the hackers were not aware of this system when they attacked.
Efimenko went on to say that the company’s defense system was able to protect its players’ personal and financial data.
Though Efimenko didn’t mention any names, he did suggest that the attack was the work of a rival bookmaker. In his view, the fact that his company wasn’t approached by anyone asking for money to halt or prevent the attack is proof that it was industrial sabotage as opposed to an attack for financial gain.
Efimenko went on to say that he had suspicions about who was behind the attack and would be making that information available in the near future.