The sports betting and online gaming industry in Brazil has seen significant expansion year after year. The sector closely monitors the progress of the betting regulation project in the National Congress and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR) pointed out a very pertinent issue for this moment.
The Brazilian press is giving space to discuss the topic. However, some platforms with questionable conduct end up providing a service that is contrary to informative materials that aim to inform the public.
According to the IBJR text published on the Metropoles website, a new practice is being promoted by questionable websites: the invasion of websites and pages with federal domain, such as city halls and universities.
In recent weeks, the Portal do Bitcoin announced that the Viana City Hall (ES) website had been hacked and contained numerous texts related to the Blaze platform – which was recently taken offline in Brazil by court order.
These texts cause companies to arbitrarily use the high levels of authorities on government platforms to promote their respective businesses.
“Consumers can join these platforms that operate illegally, leaving themselves vulnerable to scams and other online criminal practices, thinking that they are on trusted university websites, for example,” stated in the IBJR article.
Vulnerability
According to the Bitoin Portal, a notice released by the Center for Prevention, Treatment and Response to Government Cyber Incidents (CTIR) on June 7, may have opened a loophole for these actions.
The editorial team of the article published in Metropoles contacted the Secretariat for Information Security and Cybernetics (SSIC) about these issues and published the response:
“On this topic, the GSI informs that the Secretariat of Information Security and Cybernetics of the Institutional Security Office of the Presidency of the Republic (SSIC/GSI/PR), through the CTIR Gov, aims to coordinate and integrate actions aimed at management of cyber incidents in bodies or entities of the Federal Public Administration (APF) and works collaboratively with other powers, states and municipalities, particularly regarding prevention actions. From the above, when incidents are identified, the person responsible for the asset is notified so that appropriate treatment and response can be carried out”.
However, this type of invasion has not ceased and the material produced by IBJR also cited the presence of questionable texts in the domains of public universities such as Unimontes, UFSCar, UCPel and UnB.
This action ends up causing these texts to appear as important results in searches for online games on Google. This happens because these domains are seen by search engines as trustworthy and authoritative.
According to information from the CTIR, around 2800 vulnerabilities were found in Brazilian public domains at the time of publication of the IBJR material.
IBJR reinforces the importance of a regulated and responsible market
For IBJR, these practices end up happening when the consolidation of a market has not yet been completed. Debates on the regulation of sports betting have already reached the Senate and the bill is expected to be considered in October.
Furthermore, regulation helps to impose concepts and rules aimed at combating bad practices and mitigating the risks of excessive gambling by promoting responsible gambling. “Although we are still in the early stages, it is clear the size of the potential that the Brazilian market offers to operators and online players”, says the IBJR text.
