Facebook Gambling ‘Gives Hackers Greater Reason To Attack It’

Facebook should expect more attention from hackers, now that it has added a gambling game to the world’s biggest social network, a security firm has warned.

This week, Facebook launched its first ever real-money gambling app – Bingo Friendzy, developed by the London-based Gamesys. It will be available to adults who want to indulge in 90 ball bingo and slots games.

But by having real money being bet on the site, Facebook can expect to be targeted by more concerted hacking efforts, according to Paul Lawrence, vice president for international operations at Corero Network Security.

Prepare for DDoSers

“Traditionally, professional hackers tend to target websites for monetary gain, and up until now there has been very little value in attempting to hack in to Facebook other than to steal user information. Now that Facebook has turned to online gambling, there is the added incentive of potentially accessing users credit card or payment details,” Lawrence told TechWeekEurope.

“One of the most common forms of attack we see against gambling sites is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. When players are losing or wish to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent, they have been known to use a DDoS attack to bring down the game server, thus nullifying any losses, or adversely affecting their competitors.

“There is no doubt that Facebook has security in place, but by adding gambling to their site they have effectively monetised the reasons for attackers to target the site.”

André Stewart, president international at Corero, recently told TechWeekEurope he knew of gambling firms who had paid “£100,000 here and £100,000 there” just to pay off DDoSers threatening to take their business offline.

Facebook infrastructure has been hacked before. Late last year, York student Glenn Mangham admitted hacking into the social network between April and May of this year, but argued he only wanted to show Facebook how to improve its security.

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