BtoBet launches investigation into alleged security breach

Sports betting and online casino technology provider BtoBet has launched an investigation into a possible security breach in the firm. The breach, affecting its clients in Africa and South America, may have resulted in unauthorised persons gaining access to the firm’s databases and code.

According to a report by iAfrikan, the Macedonian gambling company confirmed this claim through its legal representative Aleksandar Mihajloski, who sent an email to the publication indicating that the matter was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.

“I make reference to my email dated the 6th of January, 2020,” said Mihaloski.

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“As explained in that email, my client has immediately acted and notified the respective law enforcement and regulatory authorities, whilst also notifying hid direct customer.

“The situation you make reference to is subject to an ongoing criminal investigation. We have passed all the information related to this case to all the authorities involved.”

BtoBet prides itself on being an award-winning sports betting and online casino solutions provider, offering a wide array of management services ranging from customer-facing solutions to back-office technology such as analytics for betting operators. The company also offers “White Label Partnership” solutions which can be customised and remodelled by any betting operator using it.

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An anonymous source who reached out to security researcher and founder of haveibeenpwned, Troy Hunt, revealed that Nigerian gambling firm SureBet247.com was the primary subject of investigation.

A deeper inspection into the data dump pointed out some sharp similarities worth noting. For instance, some of the betting sites appearing in the data looked suspiciously similar, with the source code of every single one of the betting operators (the ones whose customer databases were part of the data dump) pointing to the possibility that BtoBet could have been breached.

Along with SureBet247, the databases of Colombia’s BetAlfa and TopBet Uganda are believed to form part of the data dump given how their websites have shocking structural similarities. Another clue supporting the theory is that the affected betting operators have the same admin email addresses (@btobet.com) at the beginning of each “Users” table.

Furthermore, a deeper look into the permissions of all the databases forming the data dump brought up the names Nikola Mijakovski and Blagoja Mileski — Principal Software Developer at BtoBet and Technical Lead at BtoBet respectively, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

However, in an unexpected turn of events, BtoBet has claimed that while there wasn’t any serious digital breach, the company had taken several precautions to prevent unauthorised access by malicious third parties.

Sports betting has become incredibly popular in Africa over the last five years, with online and mobile betting taking the lead. Many land-based betting shops have also sprouted in towns and cities across the continent, which is why it is no surprise that eight of the top 10 countries where the words “sports betting” were searched in 2019 were African nations.

BtoBet is one of the companies that took advantage of that lucrative growth, signing partnerships deals with betting operators in Kenya, Nigeria, Namibia and Uganda.