The National Lottery of Ireland suffered a DDoS attack that temporarily knocked it offline and shut down retail terminals on January 20.
DDoS is a distributed denial of service attack that hackers sometimes use to shut down targeted sites, which prevented gamblers from accessing their online accounts and shut down many lottery terminals.
The attack occurred around 11:20 a.m. on January 20, when the Irish Lottery had a €12 million prize up for grabs that evening, which nobody won. The prize was the lottery’s largest in 18 months, and the hacker attack knocked the lottery’s site offline for about two hours.
The attack also shut down lottery terminals in many retail outlets, but the terminals were working after about 90 minutes, and the lottery’s website was online within three hours of shutting down.
Premier Lotteries Ireland operates the National Lottery of Ireland and said it was able to stop the attack within two hours of it beginning and did not receive any demands from the hackers.
DDoS attacks are common among hackers targeting gambling sites, which often result in bettors losing money from their accounts. With the Irish Lottery, the DDoS attack only prevented bettors from accessing their accounts, but their funds remained secure, the Premier Lotteries said.
The attack remains under investigation.
