Partypoker Apologizes for DDoS Attack

Partypoker was reportedly hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack on Saturday, frustrating players who were booted from play as a result.

A number of tournaments suffered interruptions, apparently the doing of computer hackers.

"We are so sorry for the problems tonight," tweeted Michelle Orpe, who provides updates and announces promotions for Partypoker at the UK Twitter Community Forum. "It was a viscious DOS attack to try & bring us down."

DDoS attacks have become a bit too frequent in online poker as of late. New Jersey gaming sites suffered a DDoS attack over the 4th of July weekend in which the hacker or hackers demanded a ransom payment in Bitcoin. Officials did not give in to the demand.

A $1 million guaranteed tournament at the Winning Poker Network was targeted by computer miscreants earlier this year. The event was cancelled and buy-ins refunded.

Every site from behemoth PokerStars to tiny Full Flush Poker is susceptible. Whether the aim of hackers is to somehow profit by perhaps gaining access to detailed information in customer databases, or merely enjoying the God-like power of disrupting service to the sites, it happens.

The attacks are carried out by overloading the websites with far too much data. The servers can't handle all the information, resulting in a sytem overload, so to speak, and rendering the sites inaccessible for an indeterminate amount of time.

A Partypoker representative chimed in on a 2 + 2 thread regarding the DDoS attack and stated: "We have added $20,000 to a selection of this Sunday’s Majors as an apology for the technical issues that affected partypoker yesterday."

The $5K Gtd Hyper Rebuy, $150K Guaranteed Sunday, $40K Gtd, $2K Super Bounty and $10K Gtd for Sunday, August 9 have received various added amounts from $1,000 to $10,000 as a "goodwill gesture" to players who may have been burned by the DDoS attack on Saturday, August 1.