Over the Christmas holidays New Zealand’s TAB betting service was the victim of a vicious cyber attack. For several days, Kiwi punters were unable to bet on sports and races. According to the New Zealand Herald, the attack started over the Christmas holiday period. The website went down, and players were unable to place wagers or access information about matches and races.

The in-store and mobile services were still available, however. The good news is that the purpose of the attack was not to gather player information. As such, players should continue to feel safe placing wagers at New Zealand’s TAB website. IT specialists at TAB worked overtime to get the network back online and thwart any further attacks.

Reports state that attacks continued until December 28th but TAB employees were able to keep them at bay. Today, gambling online with TAB seems to be secure, as there have been no outages reported within the past few days. This is the second time that a TAB service has gone down within the past month.

In early December, Australia’s TAB betting network crashed; however, it was due to a technical fault rather than an attack by hackers. The downtime lasted for about three hours, causing TAB to likely lose about $9 million in bets. Since the New Zealand’s network was down for several days, we anticipate that a similar loss was incurred. Local police are investigating the attack.

Glenn Patrick, TAB executive general manager, is still unsure of motive and hopes that the authorities will be able to get to the bottom of it. He says: "You see companies all over the world and even in New Zealand being attacked. I guess it's just part and parcel of the world we now live in unfortunately."

About the Author

George Anderson
Author George, has over 25+ years’ experience in the Pokies and Casinos industry throughout Australia and New Zealand. Loves to research new Pokies games on the block and follows announcements from top industry providers about their upcoming releases. As soon as a new interesting pokie game appears on his radar, George is there to check it out and give you the scoop before anyone else and tell you about all casino sites where can play the latest game. Before this gig, George worked as Pokie game tester, making him an ideal candidate for this genre of work. He is also an animal lover and a proud owner of three dogs.