richard at betpho

**durito** · 09-21-09, 03:33 PM

ddos attacks happen to all the books. like they really want to be down on their most profitable days of the year. people forget, but bookmaker missed an entire NFL sunday last year and another a couple years ago, and they've spent a fortune on ddos protection.

**Stumpage** · 09-21-09, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by firedawg

just got off the phone with richard... i now understand the problems they have been having, and let me just say richard is a class act. took care of my issues with them imediatley, no questions asked

I agree completely. Of course, everybody wants to come across as the nicest person on the planet when trying to entice customers, but in my experience Richard truly went above and beyond. Definitely impressed with him and the book thus far, and while the downtime is annoying, Durito's comments in the post above sum up the situation perfectly. Anyway, Phoenix have made a quick ascent into my top tier of books, primarily due to their live betting options which is not for everybody of course, but definitely for me.

**Flight** · 09-21-09, 04:54 PM

Can you go into a little more detail on ddos attacks?

It would also be nice if BetPhoenix made a statement on their frontpage about the recent issues. I am a new customer and have been very frustrated with the downtime. They got me off on the right foot and got me excited about a great book, but then the downtime really blue balled me.

I am very understanding of problems, if they would just let us know what the status is. Perhaps they are embarrassed about getting attacked? Or they don't want customers having feelings of insecurity at their site?

Even an email to current customers would've been nice on days where issues are persistent. 15 minutes of downtime is one thing but hours and days of downtime is another.

**Flight** · 09-21-09, 04:56 PM

I read the Wikipedia on ddos, interesting.

**durito** · 09-21-09, 05:00 PM

For whatever reason books don't want to comment much on it. Pinnacle's been dealing with it all year and they won't admit it. But, it's obvious as sometimes their software will block entire countries at a time. (you can email them your ip and get around it)

There is an article on what happened to cris and their software solution somewhere online, maybe someone has a link, it's absurdly long but an interesting read nonetheless.

**durito** · 09-21-09, 05:02 PM

Page not found | CSO Online

http://www.csoonline.com/article/220336/How_a_Bookmaker_and_a_Whiz_Kid_Took_On_a_DDOS_based_Online_Extortion_Attack?page=1

Tried to copy and paste, but it's too long for one post.

**RJbetphoenix** · 09-21-09, 05:38 PM

In easy terms:

DDOS or Direct Denial of Service attack is when a group of hacker types infects an enormous amount of computers with viruses. They turn those infected computers into a Bot network and direct traffic in mass into a website. So much traffic that it blocks the pipe and nobody can get in. This has been going on offshore for about 6 years. We have protection for this in house, and get DDOS attacked year round.

The difference this time is the style of attack. It is not a server attack, it is an application attack. The bots that are coming in mimic real traffic unlike their predecessors. Once inside of an application they exponent their database calls.

In a normal old attack the bot comes and asks your server "are you here?" hundreds of times. The server says yes so many times it bogs down and grinds to a halt. The protection we have, and most have, would answer that question so the server does not get bogged down. The number of requests also made it easy to identify bot versus real client and simple ip blocks are then automated.

As a real player who came in to BP your computer would ask that same "are you here?" question, but then move on to an application. The new attack is now acting like the real player, and once bypassed protection, new questions are asked of the server in exponent again grinding it to a halt. As we speak there are over 100k ip addresses (bots) sending in requests to BP. In bandwidth alone you can imagine if each bot is running at 1 MB (the standard internet provider amount for a client) that is 100K MB sent in to shut the BP site down.

At this point we have solved the issue, and should be up at a 98% rate. This attack most definitely is highly evolved. Also, Thank you all for your patience in the face of this issue. I am happy to be 98% done with it.

**JoeVig** · 09-21-09, 06:59 PM

RJ,
Thanks for being open about then problem. You normally never hear about this stuff because its bad publicity, and you never know who paid the ransom and who kept fighting the good fight.

Personally, I think putting a contract out on these assholes would be the best money spent.

**Toit** · 09-21-09, 08:12 PM

Originally posted by durito

http://www.csoonline.com/article/220..._Attack?page=1

Tried to copy and paste, but it's too long for one post.

Nice read.

**Justin7** · 09-21-09, 08:50 PM

How much did they ask for to make the attack stop?

**topgame85** · 09-21-09, 11:37 PM

So what is it a bunch of little computer nerds getting kicks or is it a type of extortion? "Hey you can do no buisiness or you can pay us x amount and get on with making money"

**tltaylor89** · 09-22-09, 12:33 AM

Rj is class a he could really teach Tony at 5Dimes a little thing about cs

c

**moniker** · 09-22-09, 04:31 AM

Originally posted by topgame85

So what is it a bunch of little computer nerds getting kicks or is it a type of extortion? "Hey you can do no buisiness or you can pay us x amount and get on with making money"

If your favourite Super Mario Bros fan site goes down, the former

In this case, I would presume it's the latter

**brendan** · 09-22-09, 07:42 AM

Complete BS that these crooks can get away with this crap

**HeeeHAWWWW** · 09-22-09, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by topgame85

So what is it a bunch of little computer nerds getting kicks or is it a type of extortion? "Hey you can do no buisiness or you can pay us x amount and get on with making money"

Big business I think - these are huge nets of bazillions of zombie infected PCs. Apparently there's quite a market out there for them, they rent them out for any purpose (spamming, DoS, ID theft, whatever).

**betphoenix** · 09-22-09, 10:36 AM

They have never asked us for money. We seem to be the testing ground because they know we have top dollar protection systems in-house. They took us down for a bit last season, so we invested in solid protection hardware and software. They had not been able to take us down since then even with round the clock DDOS being sent in. They did get to us this time. So, I think they see if they can get to us, they can get to many. It is either that or a competitor who does not want us around

.

**tltaylor89** · 09-22-09, 12:49 PM

Hey rj let me get those sir points for the headache Brad give me when he calls

**blackbart** · 09-22-09, 12:53 PM

doesnt it seem like they could make more $ by using their talent for good not evil. publicly acknowledging the attackers only encourages them that is why you dont hear more about it.
internet piracy, if you havent been infected by these fukkers you will, or already are and dont know it. there are whole forums dedicated to dealing with the problems they cause .