It has long been reported that one of the next stops for the burgeoning online gambling industry will be the continent of Asia. We’ve already seen the extensive growth that’s taking place in land based casinos on the continent, to the extent that Macau and others have overtaken Las Vegas, with growth not dissipating. One problem that online gambling faces in a number of jurisdictions, whether it be Cyprus or South Korea, it’s the fact organized crime might try to infiltrate.
Yonhap News Agency reports that an increasing number of organized criminals are launching cyber attacks on their rivals in South Korea in order to dominate the unregulated and illegal online gambling market that exists.
It’s reported that the ring operated out of the city of Incheon, where the criminals hired hackers to attack more than 100 rival online gambling sites during the months of November and December last year. The Police believe that 50,000 zombie computers purchased in China were used to carry out the attacks. So far it’s resulted in one man being held in detention.
One official commented that, “The case shows that crime organizations are getting into cyber warfare. We will persist in cracking down on cyber attackers to prevent a new kind of crime from spreading.”
As we mentioned earlier, this isn’t a new issue as some of the less ethical operators in unlicensed and regulated jurisdictions in the west, such as Costa Rica, have engaged in these type of activities, although nothing’s ever been proven. The fact it’s happening in the much wilder confines of the Asian Internet is no surprise.
This is incidentally potentially one argument for licensing and regulation that even CalvinAyre.com would agree with. In many cases regulation and licensing is just a government’s attempt to influence market forces and are net bad for consumers, France being the latest example of this being the case.
