"Do you think (U.S. Attorney General) John Ashcroft is going to come to the aid of some sports books that are being attacked? They could give a 'you know what' about them," Matthews said.
Worsening the situation, some prominent sports books initially paid off the attackers to keep their sites online, encouraging more attacks, Matthews said.
Calls to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the DDoS attacks were not returned.
There is widespread belief among bookmakers and gamblers that those responsible for the attack are located in Russia or Eastern Europe, beyond Western law enforcement's reach, according Lawrence, Pena and others.
To stop the attacks, larger and more sophisticated sports books are using technology to fight back.
Lawrence said that the DDoS attacks have been a boon for Top Layer, which installed eight to 10 of their Attack Mitigator hardware appliances in the last month.
"I just received three new inquiries this morning that are urgent and need to be done now because of the Super Bowl," Lawrence said.
Top Layer even offers emergency service for companies under attack.
"We send guys out on a plane with an (Attack Mitigator) box under their arm and they install it mid-flow," he said.
At Yahoops.com, technical staff responded to attacks by working with their Web hosting provider to increase the bandwidth to their site to make it harder to knock offline, Raviv said.
The company also developed an internal solution called a "dispatcher," which is modeled on technology used by distributed computing company Akamai Technologies Inc. and dynamically moves the Yahoops.com Web site between different IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to sidestep attacks, he said.
If nothing else, the sustained attacks might force collaboration in an industry long characterized by fierce competitiveness and mutual suspicion, according to Matthews.
"Companies are going to have to work hard and spend money to upgrade their computers. And they're going to have to share information. They have a common goal and they have to help each other to find a solution," he said.
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