Monthly Archives: January 2016

Lottoland wins Aussie license; US law bans bringing winning tickets over the border

B2C lottery betting site Lottoland has received a license to operate in Australia, offering Aussie punters a shot at Wednesday’s record $1.4b Powerball lottery drawing in the US.

The Gibraltar-based Lottoland was recently granted a five-year license from the Northern Territory’s Racing Commission. Former Betfred/Centrebet exec Luke Brill has been tapped to run Lottoland’s Aussie operations, which are already underway via the lottoland.com.au domain.

Lottoland is the first lottery betting site to receive an Aussie license, meaning Australians are getting their first shot at betting on the results of international lottery draws from the comfort of their own home. Previously, local residents would have to physically travel to foreign countries to be able to participate in non-Australian lottery drawings.

Wednesday’s Powerball drawing will likely top $1.5b or more thanks to the frenzied last-minute rush of overly optimistic people willing to defy the 1 in 292m odds of snagging the top prize. We’re secretly praying that the prize goes to someone in Syria, much like the Iraqi who in December claimed a $6.4m Oregon Lottery prize he’d legally purchased from an online reseller, because something like that would really set Donald Trump off on a tirade.

Europol raids DD4BC distributed denial of service extortion group

The European Union’s top law enforcement agency has dealt a blow to an extortion ring targeting online gambling sites with distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.

In a statement published on its website, Europol announced that agents from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany and the UK cooperated on raids in December that netted two key members of the DD4BC (Distributed Denial of Service for Bitcoin) group, which directed its attacks primarily against the online gambling industry.

Europol’s Operation Pleiades focused on two members of the DD4BC ring located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of whom was identified as the “main target” of the raids. The UK Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit was credited with identifying the location of the key suspects. Europol also said it had conducted multiple property searches and seized an “extensive” amount of evidence.

Europol claims that DD4BC has been responsible for several Bitcoin extortion campaigns since mid-2014. Gambling sites were the main targets but DD4BC recently branched out into targeting financial services and entertainment sector sites. The group also attempted to extort users of the infamous infidelity site Ashley Madison after a hack last year resulted in members’ email addresses being published online.