Online Casino Security

September 19, 2013

A 19 year old Argentinian hacker has just been arrested and charged with stealing over $50,000 a month from online casino sites. The person in question had somehow managed to gain access to online gambling site servers, and intercept financial transactions. This sounds pretty bad doesn’t it? How does this affect security at online casino sites, when even payment processors are being hacked?

Well, in truth, this is a lot of scare mongering. The payment processor wasn’t hacked, neither was the online gambling site. Indeed, no hacking actually took place. Although the authorities are calling this person a hacker, he was not. Hacking involves breaking through online security systems, by exploiting security vulnerabilities, this is not what happened in this case. Instead, the offender developed a specific piece of malware, which would capture information when players used a payment processor to deposit cash into their online casino account.

So, the good news here, is that if we consider the fact that the authorities and news organizations have completely misreported this incident, then most people should be completely secure when it comes to online gambling, but with a caveat. Malware such as this used to get details of customers passwords for payment processors, is picked up by anti-virus software. If you are into online gambling, then you really owe it to yourself to make sure your anti-virus software is installed correctly, is entirely up to date and working effectively.

Luckily, Windows will warn us when our anti-virus software is not functioning 100%, and you should never ever ignore one of the warnings that Windows will give you should you need to update your AV software.

And of course, never divulge passwords or other personal information over the internet to anyone. Most online gambling sites state quite clearly that one of their service staff will never ask you for your password. Should you be requested to give your password, then you can rest assured that you are not actually speaking to an official member of staff from online casino support, and you should never give out your password in this case.

On a positive note, there have been no reported successful hacking attacks against online gambling sites in more than a year. These companies take their security seriously, and hacking into this kind of infrastructure is virtually impossible in this day and age. Full scale corporate hacking is very rare these days.

Other Recent Articles Added to 777 Online Slots