Bots are Winning at Online Casinos

February 05, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

0 Comments

Every so often, a new threat to online casinos and other gambling sites surfaces. If it is not the UIGEA in the United States, which makes it difficult for players to deposit money at online gambling sites, it might well be something else.

The most recent issue that online gambling sites are dealing with it the use of bots (robots for the uninitiated) on their sites. Hackers have created bots which are disguised as regular online gaming players. These bots are programed so that they can foresee odds.

The online publication for Internet technology security experts, SC magazine, reported that hackers have begun to use bots to gather information from online casinos. The information gathered reveals patterns in the payouts of online casinos.

The information is gathered together by using web-scraping techniques. Those wishing to perpetuate scams can do so by computing through arbitration systems. These systems will help them find the times at which bets are most likely to win.

The bots are difficult to track, and equally difficult to prevent by the Internet casinos' security systems. The reason they are difficult to track and prevent is because they have been programed to run off scripts that are set to simulate play as if the bot is a real live gambler playing.

The regional director for Radware for Israel, the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, Guri Geva, said that the hackers "can use the bot to manipulate the odds to improve the winning margin." Mr. Geva also stated that the bot can also measure times. In this way, the bot can hit sites only when they are at their busiest. If the bot only operates when sites are very busy, they can be used without being detected easily. Detection is far more difficult when there are many players using a site at any one time.

Mr. Geva has recommended that gambling websites prepare for attacks by hackers in the best way that they can. He advises that casino sites use software that will analyze user behavior in transparent real time. He noted that it is likely that the numbers and complexity of these kinds of attacks on the Internet gambling industry are likely to keep growing.

This problem, while negatively effecting the gambling industry is only one part of a much broader problem that can effect all websites. The security adviser said "Webscraping is going on all the time," and further explained that information can be stolen from websites. The same details are then added onto another site, and viewers are redirected to the other site. The security adviser stated "This can lead to fraud and even phishing, you could blacklist IP addresses but that will require a lot of time."