Wired.com has a fascinating article entitled "Gambling Sites Hedging Bets" that describes hackers' extorting money from online gambling casinos. Here is its lede:
As Super Bowl weekend approaches, Mickey Richardson, general manager of BetCRIS, an online gambling site based in Costa Rica, readies himself for the action. But there's also a cloud hanging over his, and other gambling sites' profitable Feb. 6 weekend.
An e-mail could come at any moment threatening to take down the site unless $40,000 or more is paid to an anonymous account.
Online gambling was, and still is, an industry ripe for the picking and extortion attempts like these are fairly common, not just around the Super Bowl. According to gaming analysts River City Group, estimated 2004 revenues for online gambling reached more than $7 billion. About 350 companies run at least 1,700 gaming sites. It's also a largely unregulated industry -- many of these companies are headquartered offshore in countries without ample law enforcement resources to pursue hackers thousands of miles away, so the site operators often feel the pressure to pay.
