The well-known PokerStars platform was already the victim of a DDoS attack at the end of September. The disruption was so massive that close competitions had to be canceled and ongoing tournaments had to be terminated. No one knows why the attack took place - maybe someone lost too much?
PokerStars has since deleted the information page on the DDoS attack. Maybe it wasn't considered good publicity. Had on the deleted pages PokerStars confirmed that Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks had caused "temporary website downtime". This was followed by the cancellation of dozens of tournaments, including all six WCOOP Main Events.
DDoS attack: frustration or competition?
The attack disrupted all tournaments as a preventive measure before being canceled altogether less than two hours later. PokerStars confirmed online that all affected players would be compensated and said in a statement that their teams are continuing to work to resolve the impacted players. The declaration can currently only be accessed via the Google cache. But it said:
“Technical issues caused by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)* attacks have occurred over the past 24 hours, resulting in temporary website outages. We can confirm that all our customers' accounts and their personal information are safe with no evidence of any cyber breach. Our teams are working to mitigate the issue and address customers whose game may be affected.
Unfortunately, such events are a constant threat to any business operating online, and we are no different. These attacks often go unnoticed by customers because we have invested in our security systems and the layers of protection are in place to successfully mitigate them. We have a great track record of keeping our platform running, but we know how frustrating it can be to experience this kind of disruption, especially during our WCOOP and Galactic series. We would like to apologize to all those affected and thank them for their patience.
Unfortunately, such events are a constant threat to any business operating online
We're not letting these actions stop us from crowning the 2022 WCOOP Main Event Champions and we now plan to hold the Main Events the weekend of November 5th. There WILL be champions in 2022! For our Southern European players, we will be hosting another Sunday Million on November 6th, although we have no plans to host the Galactic Series Main Event again.
We are aware that some players participating in Monthly Poker Challenges are experiencing these issues. We will therefore compensate players who were unable to complete their challenge due to the impact of the technical issues. Our players and their experience, safety and security on our side remain our top priority.!”
DDoS attacks cost trust and money
Even if DDoS attacks often do not cause direct material damage to hardware, software or code, there is still a high level of damage caused by the disruption to business operations. While DDoS is a very old form of online attack, it is effective time and time again. Apparently Pokerstars doesn't use protection techniques like CDN networks (such as Cloudflare) or DDoS mitigation services, such as by Link11. In an emergency, however, these can sometimes be implemented within hours.