About Commission Kings
Commission Kings is one of the largest global sports betting and iGaming affiliate networks. It includes several trusted and established brands, such as BetOnline, Wild Casino and SportsBetting.ag. Commission Kings has been operational for several decades. BetOnline, for example, has been in operation for over 20 years. However, over its years of operation, Commission Kings had not experienced such a significant cyberattack as this latest one. For a business whose operations rely heavily on its online presence, the company experienced a serious disruption of service. Following the attack, Commission Kings had to suspend all its brands’ services and work around the clock to restore its systems. Consequently, all the company’s activities were halted until systems were brought back online 4 days after the attack began.
Took One Day to Discover Cyberattack
On Friday 16 October, at around 3 pm, Commission Kings sent out a tweet to its customers. The message acknowledged that its website was experiencing problems and that their IT Team was “actively working” on resolving the problems. Then, around midnight on the morning of 17 October, the company stated their systems were experiencing technical issues. It wasn’t until an hour and a half later that Commission Kings realized that they were suffering a cyberattack. At this time the company sent out a tweet stating: “valued customers, we are offline due to an aggressive cyber attack. We’re taking every measure to resolve the issue and we will be fully operational again as soon as possible.”
Restoring Commission Kings’ Operational Capacity
Nevertheless, restoring operational capacity turned out to be a slow process. Commission Kings’ IT team worked around the clock to bring its systems back online. However, by Saturday evening the company was still unable to provide an ETA as to when its systems would be back online. A further tweet told customers that it was still “a very fluid situation.” At midnight on Monday morning 19 October, Commission King was able to provide some good news to its customers, saying: “We made significant progress overnight and expect to be live with most services today.” Some three hours later the company sent out another tweet stating “We are now LIVE with most services and expect to be 100% very soon.” However, work continued throughout Monday as customers were experiencing technical difficulties accessing the site, logging in and placing wagers. Finally, at 4 am this morning a tweet went out stating that the company was operating at near full capacity. Since then, all Commission Kings’ brands have had their operations restored, including BetOnline, SportsBetting.ag and Wild Casino.
All Data Safe
As yet, no information has been provided by Commission Kings as to the type of cyberattack they had encountered. Consequently, it is not yet known whether it was a ransomware attack, DDoS attack or some other form of malware that caused the disruption to the company’s services. Nor is it known how the company managed to restore its systems. Did the company restore their systems from backup, or did they pay a ransom, if it was a ransomware attack? Commission Kings did, however, confirm that all sensitive user data had been fully protected from malicious actors during the cyberattack. It also stated that “1. All player balances and funds are 100% safe and secure. 2. All pending wagers are still valid.”
