ACR Fends Off Latest DDOS Attack
America’s Cardroom (ACR) and its host network, the Winning Poker Network, appear to have successfully fended off the latest in a long-running series of DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks targeting its online connectivity.
ACR, one of the larger grey-market sites in the online sphere, first notified its customers of the ongoing attack late on Thursday, August 31st. The attack stretched well into Friday, September 1st, when ACR used social media to report that the attack had been “mitigated”. The method of mitigation, however, caused a secondary series of service problems, which caused additional downtime for WPN that stretched into yesterday, Saturday, September 2nd.
The extended downtime certainly caused some temporary business losses for the attackers, who often launch such extortion-based schemes just prior to busy events or periods for their targets — in this case the United States’ extended Labor Day holiday weekend. In this case, the disruption caused the cancellation of several events in ACR’s ongoing OSS Cub3d series.
As with other offerings underway or scheduled to occur during the attack’s timeframe, the OSS (Online Super Series) saw its affected events end with the forced closure of tourney tables. All ongoing tourneys on the site saw refunds issued to players in accordance with the site’s rules covering such service outages.
Despite the attacks, ACR and WPN were able to get their services fully restored in time for the bulk of their holiday-weekend schedule, including the latest addition of ACR’s Million Dollar Sunday, which also doubles as Event #72 on the latest OSS’s schedule of events.
Here’s the Tweet sequence from ACR detailing the beginning of the DDOS attack, its effect on the site and network, and the restoration of services:
We are currently experiencing a DDOS attack, all running tournaments have been paused. Will keep you updated
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
at this moment, the tournaments department is canceling and refunding all tournaments as per our terms and conditions.
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
Our techs have been able to mitigate the DDOS attack, the client is back up. If you need any further assitance please contact our CS dept
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
We are experiencing another DDOS attack, our techs are working in order to mitigate it. All running tournaments have been paused
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
The DDOS attack is still underway Our techs are mitigating it, causing for some players not being able to connect. Will update soon
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
The DDOS attack has been mitigated. Cash game and tournaments are up. Will keep you guys posted. pic.twitter.com/qIWLJe3Iew
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
All tournaments are paused at the moment. Our techs are checking the situation. pic.twitter.com/02fG6GmXYh
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
Tournaments will be resuming at 7pm ET
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
As several players have not been able to reconnect, we are pausing all running tournaments. Apologies for the issues
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
Techs are doing a quick service switch, it will disconnect all players and will be able to reconnect in 15 seconds.
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
All running tournaments will be cancelled and refunded. Apologies for the inconveniences
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 1, 2017
Our techs are working on the situation and there is no ETA at the moment but will keep you posted. We are sorry about all the inconveniences
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 2, 2017
we have implemented a fix for the issues, please check your client connection and let us know if you are getting any problem to connect
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) September 2, 2017
ACR paused action for one more brief period on Saturday before services were fully restored. The on-again, off-again nature of any online service’s responses to a serious DDOS attack is unfortunately the norm for such episodes, as the attackers bring ever-increasing waves of bot-based resources to bear on their extortion targets.
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