What do you know about the DOS attacks on sportsbooks and poker rooms?

[pokeraddict]

I have read on sports911 and personally experienced at rooms I played at DOS attacks. Are these extortionists? Bored teenage hackers? Isnt there a way an ISP could prevent this with software or blocks?

[jetset]

There's some detailed techie stuff here:
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/trend...1164_3293711_1 -

DDoS attacks have mainly been plaguing the sportsbook side of the business, usually just before major sporting events, but there are reports starting to surface of threats to online poker rooms and casinos as well. Almost all the reports I have heard about have involved Eastern European crooks who usually try to use the threat of a DDoS assault to extort money.

Top anti-crime organisations in several countries are collaborating to stop this menace.

Sometimes, sportsbooks have just paid and kept quiet about the incident as they feared it may lose them clients.

I'm told that the thing to remember is that these attacks do NOT hack into any systems, and that private information remains secure. The DDoS attack typically directs masses of traffic onto the target site, overwhelming it's capacity to operate. Access to the system or records itself is not the threat - rendering the site inoperable through over-use is the objective.

Fortunately, the counter-technology is improving all the time although it does not look as if a definitive answer has been achieved yet.

What poker sites have you seen attacked and how did they handle it as a matter of interest, pokeraddict?