The British Labour Party has demanded the National Lottery to guarantee with utter surety that its website is totally safe and risk-free for customers. The call for assurances comes about half a month after thousands of customers had their online accounts at Camelot’s website hacked by cyber criminals.
At the end of November, the operator of the UK National Lottery – Camelot Group – officially announced that there had been “suspicious activity” in its website, which had affected a small number of players. According to the official statement published on Camelot’s corporate website, cyber criminals who attacked the customers’ accounts have breached around 26,500 users accounts.
Currently, the National Lottery operator has around 9.5 million registered online players. As revealed by Camelot at the end of November, the customers’ accounts that were affected by some activity, were fewer than 50. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of December, the company updated its press release, saying that the accounts actually affected by the security breach amounted to just 43.
The UK National Lottery operator said that after some extensive checks and verifications, as well as consultations with the accounts’ owners it was found out the majority of the activities registered in the accounts was legitimately carried out by the accounts’ owners themselves. The company also explained that at that stage, the investigations continued in the accounts of some customers who might not have carried out the activity.
Tom Watson asked Culture Secretary Karen Bradley if she was confident that the website of the National Lottery operator had its operational security restored. Mr. Watson required her to give the House her “absolute assurance” that the country’s National Lottery is absolutely risk-free for players. He also asked her to reveal if there were any further security breaches found.
Ms. Karen Bradley revealed that she had met the official representatives of Camelot and she was constantly working with the National Lottery operator in order to make sure its website was as secure as it could be. She added that she was keeping in touch with Camelot to be sure that the company took every measure it could in terms of cyber security.
- Author
Daniel Williams
