Perhaps it’s because people involved in the Internet gambling sector tend to be well briefed on the Distributed Denial of Services brand of cyber extortion, but a CBC report this week on a talk on the subject really contained nothing new or exciting.

Addressing the Nova Scotia Responsible Gambling Conference in Halifax, university criminologist researcher John McMullan said that his new research into cyber crime, conducted over the past five years, suggests the global, $10-billion-a-year online gambling industry is regularly held for ransom by sophisticated hackers and organised criminals.

McMullan shared the well known information that online gambling sites have been targeted for "digital shakedowns" at peak times, such as the approach of the Super Bowl and other major sporting events.

He goes on to describe the equally well known DDOS modus operandi of deploying zombie PC armies to swamp victim sites with unwanted electronic messages and virtually shut them down, followed by demands for cash – typically in the range $40-60 000 to cease the disruption.

McMullan told conference delegates that the hackers often have a business hierarchy, running organisations that are global and invisible, with the masterminds recruiting people, often via e-mail, to carry out the crime, never meeting in person.

"They recruited different people, like hackers and worm writers, and crackers. There were people who were involved in picking up the money, bankers who were able to move the money around," said McMullan, who is a criminologist at St Mary’s University in Halifax.

McMullan said there have been a number of arrests [more well reported information] in Latvia, Russia and Eastern Europe. In recent years, online betting websites have beefed up security, but McMullan said the criminals are getting smarter, too.

"For every ability to develop a better security architecture, you can be sure the hackers and cyber extortionists are out there scanning your security, trying to find out how to defeat it."

He said these modern criminal groups use the anonymity of the internet, as well as different bank accounts and shell companies, to skim the profits from online gambling.