Hacker Claims They Were Paid to Disrupt Americas Cardroom in Recent DDoS Attack

September 6th, 2017 | by Kaycee James

Americas Cardroom has been hit by a professional hacker who claims to be employed by a rival site to carry out the DDoS attacks.

Winning Poker Network (WPN) CEO Phil Nagy has said that a paid hacker is behind the recent DDoS attacks. (Image: YouTube/Americas Cardroom)

The online poker site, which is part of the Winning Poker Network (WPN), experienced its latest series of DDoS attacks on September 1. Announcing the news via a tweet, the operator temporarily paused all active tournaments before later announcing they would be cancelled due to the ongoing nature of the disruption.

Nagy Breaks Down Recent Attacks

Then, on September 3, another incident occurred and Americas Cardroom was forced to cancel its tournaments once again. In a bid to reassure players and explain the situation, WPN CEO Phil Nagy took to Twitch on September 5 to give specific details about the incidents.

After admitting that DDoS attacks have been an intermittent problem over the last few years, he noted that the latest problems followed a similar pattern to those seen in the past.

On this occasion, the attacker appeared in the site’s live chat and told support staff to inform the IT team that an attack was imminent unless a ransom was paid.

As he’d done previously, Nagy denied the request and said that he never pays “a terrorist” demanding money for a DDoS attacks.

Indeed, since Americas Cardroom hosted its first million dollar tournament back in 2014, Nagy has opted to cancel major events in light of DDoS attacks rather than submit to such demands.

Hacker Employed by a Rival Site

Explaining the incident further, Nagy pointed out that his network had been hit by 26 attacks in three days from September 1 and the person responsible claimed to be employed by another poker site. The comment was made in the live chat after Nagy had told the cybercriminal to get a job.

For his part, Nagy said he is unable to verify whether or not the hacker is being paid by a rival site, but he does believe WPN is being targeted more than any other network or site. Moreover, he said that it actually costs money to carry out a DDoS attack and that he must have annoyed someone for them to fund this kind of activity.

At this stage, Nagy is sticking to his guns and refusing to pay any ransoms, but he is working with his tech team to plug some of the security flaws in the site. Although DDoS attacks are tough to stop, he does want to “lessen the impact to players” in the coming months.

In the meantime, Nagy is postponing the site’s largest tournaments until he can be certain they won’t be adversely affected by any cybercriminals intent on disrupting the action. One thing that Nagy did say with certainty, however, is that he won’t stop running the network as long as players continue to ante-up.