Thursday November 24,2011 : Topgame claims to have convincing evidence pointing to perpetrator
The public wrestling match between online gambling software provider Topgame and affiliate management group Affactive over alleged DDoS attacks continued overnight on industry message boards, with Topgame asserting that it has compelling evidence pointing to the perpetrator.
In the latest posts at the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association forum, an anonymous poster using the handle "macloud" claimed to be a founder of Topgame, albeit now no longer involved in the company, and came out strongly in support of Topgame and licensee Rome Casino, both of which claim to have been targeted.
He alleged that he was involved in discussions with a person he named in his post and said was the owner of Affactive. The discussions were about an ongoing DDoS attack and the payments and assurances from Rome Partners that were required in order to halt the assault. "Macloud" acted as go-between in meeting the demands and the attacks stopped.
"At the time my only intention in this whole affair was to try to keep the company running and everyone happy with as little interruption as possible. I now understand that XXXX isn't interested in peace. His only goal at this point seems to be to knock competition out of the market by force and control everyone," "macloud observed in his post.
A year later, he claims that the same individual tried to repeat the extortion, this time demanding more money directly from Topgame and threatening to take the Rome Casino site down "…along with TopGame (gaming servers, website and affiliate program). I believe he succeeded in extorting an additional 75k USD."
The poster goes on to surmise that because no demands for cash have on this occasion been made, the motive for the assaults must be to eliminate a competitor, and he suggests that the reason may be because Affactive now has its own software provider, branded Game Scale.
"Macloud's" post was followed by another update from a Topgame spokesperson, who alleged:
"We hereby confirm that we found a direct correlation between the recent DDoS attacks on our servers and one of our licensees; they were operating Mayflower Casino and Grand Macao Casino. Their license has been revoked permanently. We don’t tolerate this criminal behavior and certainly do not partner with such."
The public airing of such unprofessional and criminal behaviour does not reflect well on the parties involved or for that matter the industry, but it appears so far that recourse to more conventional judicial remedies and police assistance is not being contemplated.