Hold on — a small Aussie casino managed to survive a week-long DDoS onslaught while bigger operators floundered, and the lessons are fair dinkum useful for any venue from Sydney to Perth. This piece gives practical, step-by-step fixes you can apply whether you run a lights-on pokie room in the suburbs or a boutique online site serving Aussie punters, and it starts with the core problem the little mob faced. The next paragraph explains the attack profile so you know what you’re defending against.

Short story first: the attack began as a steady flood of SYN/UDP packets aimed at the casino’s betting API and then escalated into an application-layer blitz on live bet placement endpoints, meaning genuine punters got timeouts and refunds started piling up. The small operator saw spikes of A$120,000 in lost wagers within 48 hours, which made them pivot fast to defensive tactics that didn’t break the bank. Next I’ll map the realistic threat model so you can spot the weak points in your stack.

Here’s the threat model to keep in your back pocket: volumetric floods (Gbps/Tbps), protocol attacks (SYN/ACK exhaustion), and low-and-slow HTTP floods against session endpoints — and in Australia the peak volumes tend to coincide with big fixtures like the Melbourne Cup or State of Origin, which changes how you size your defences. The mob in our case noticed the first signs on Melbourne Cup day and that timing complicated mitigation because traffic surges looked legit until the attack vector shifted. I’ll now walk through the layered defensive architecture they used, which is the meat of this guide.

Layered Defence for Aussie Small Casinos: What Worked

Wow — layering is boring, but it works: start with edge filtering (CDN/WAF), then move to network scrubbing, rate-limits at the app tier, and finish with operational playbooks that include communications and payments contingencies. The small casino used a mix of cloud CDN edge rules, lightweight on-prem rate controls, and a managed scrubbing partner, which kept the site alive during peak punting. Below I break each layer into implementable steps so you can copy them without a PhD in networking.

1) Edge: CDN + WAF tuned for punting traffic in Australia

Use a reliable CDN with a WAF and tune it for frequent Australian patterns — e.g., short bursts of POSTs during the last five minutes of AFL and NRL matches and long polling for live odds. The team leaned on geo-steering that prioritised Telstra and Optus routes for lower latency during local peak times and set WAF rules to challenge non-browser user agents. Next, I’ll show how to size and configure rate limits for local spikes so you don’t block true-blue punters by accident.

2) Network scrubbing and volumetric protection

For volumetric bursts they routed suspicious streams to a scrubbing centre with AS-path filtering and SYN-cookie support; this cost them roughly A$3,500/day during the height of the incident compared with the potential A$120,000 in lost action. The scrubbing partner also filtered out spoofed IP prefixes common in large botnets. After that, they put a budget-friendly retention policy in place so scrubbing could kick in quickly if thresholds passed without human sign-off, which I’ll cover in the operations section next.

3) Application-level mitigations and resilience

At the app layer they added per-account and per-IP rate limits for bet placements (e.g., max 10 bet submissions per 30s) and required incremental CAPTCHA challenges for suspicious patterns — implemented as a soft-fail so regular punters weren’t annoyed. They also made sure the odds engine could respond with cached default odds if the live feed timed out, preventing complete checkout failures. This leads directly into payment and customer-experience contingencies which you must plan for.

Practical Checklist: Quick Defence Items for Australian Operators

Here’s the quick checklist the team used to stop the bleeding — tick off what you can and then run the drills below to ensure they actually work in a hot arvo. After the checklist I’ll dive into cost-effective vendor choices and the trade-offs between fully managed scrubbing vs. DIY setups.

• Enable CDN with WAF and geo-based routing (test on Telstra & Optus)
• Set SYN-cookie and protocol protections on your firewall
• Implement per-user & per-IP rate-limiting for betting endpoints
• Have a managed scrubbing contact and an agreed SLA for activation
• Prepare cached fallback odds & queued bet acceptance to avoid refunds
• Set a communications playbook (support templates, SMS/Push notices)
• Plan payment fallbacks — POLi, PayID, BPAY info for customers

Each of these steps connects to the larger operational playbook, which I’ll outline next so your crew isn’t guessing during a strike.

Comparison Table: Defensive Options vs. Small-Casino Constraints (Australia)

Option	Pros	Cons	Estimated A$ Cost / month
CDN + WAF (Cloud)	Fast edge filtering, global scrubbing funnels	Needs tuning to avoid false positives	A$200–A$1,200
Managed Scrubbing Service	Handles volumetric attacks, 24/7	Pay-as-you-go during incidents	A$1,000–A$10,000 (incident)
AWS Shield / Azure DDoS	Integrated with cloud infra, auto-scale	Cost plus cloud egress charges	A$500–A$5,000
On-prem rate-limiter + firewall	Low ongoing cost, full control	Limited against large botnets	A$0–A$500
Hybrid (CDN + Scrubbing + App controls)	Best uptime, balanced cost	More moving parts to manage	A$1,500–A$5,000

This table helps you pick based on expected turnover and peak loads, and I’ll next show the real-case ops playbook that glued these choices together during the incident.

Operations Playbook: Runbook for an Aussie Arvo Outage

My gut says most outages are fixed or made worse by poor comms, so the playbook is focused on speed and clarity: (1) Detect: set synthetic probes and dashboards; (2) Triage: is it volumetric or app-layer?; (3) Activate: CDN challenge rules then scrubbing; (4) Failover: switch to cached odds and queue bets; (5) Customer comms: SMS/Push + site banner; (6) Reconcile: avoid duplicate payouts. I’ll detail the thresholds and sample messages next to make your first drill straightforward.

Threshold examples the team used: trigger edge filtering if inbound traffic > 3× baseline AND active error rate > 2% for five minutes; escalate to scrubbing if inbound bandwidth > 5 Gbps or if SYN flood > 200k pps. They also pre-authorised an A$10,000 emergency scrubbing spend to avoid slow procurement. These numbers should be tuned to your normal traffic and the next section explains how to rehearse them without scaring punters.

Payments, Punter Experience & Legal Notes for Australia

Practical reality: during the incident most punters tried to top up or withdraw and payment delays cause the loudest complaints; the team proactively published a payments FAQ showing options (POLi, PayID, BPAY and bank transfers) and reminded punters that winnings are tax-free in Australia. They also reminded customers they could register for BetStop or contact Gambling Help Online (1800 858 858) if needed. Next, I’ll include how to handle refunds and disputes so your compliance team isn’t scrambling.

Why a Trusted Local Brand Matter — and a Note on Partners

When you pick mitigation vendors and customer channels, local trust counts. Aussie punters prefer clear local channels and fast Aussie-dollar refunds; the small casino kept messaging consistent and even referred punters to familiar brands like pointsbet as an example of how licensed operators communicate during outages, which reduced churn. This kind of local context helps keep people calm while technical fixes roll out, and next I’ll list the common mistakes to avoid so you don’t repeat others’ errors.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Here are the mistakes that tripped up peers: (1) No activation budget so scrubbing was delayed; (2) Blocking whole AS ranges and collateral-damaging legit users; (3) No cached fallback for odds so checkouts failed; (4) Poor SMS templates that escalated complaints; (5) Ignoring local telecom routing (Telstra/Optus latency spikes). Avoid these by rehearsing the runbook, pre-authorising a small emergency fund (A$5,000–A$20,000), and using per-endpoint rate limits instead of blunt IP blocks, which I’ll expand on in the mini-FAQ.

Mini-FAQ for Australian Casino Operators

These FAQs tie directly into the quick-checklist items you should test in your next drill, which I describe below so your crew isn’t caught flat-footed.

Two Small Case Examples (Mini-Cases)

Case A — Suburban pokie operator: after adding a basic CDN and per-API rate-limits, they avoided timeouts during a State of Origin match and cut refunds by ~A$6,200 that night; their upfront cost was A$450 that month. The next paragraph explains how site UX tweaks prevented complaints from turning into chargebacks.

Case B — Boutique online bookmaker: they pre-contracted scrubbing and rehearsed SMS templates; during a weekend SYN flood they enabled scrubbing within 12 minutes and kept uptime at 99.6%, saving reputation and roughly A$85,000 in potential lost margin over a two-day window. Following that, I list checks to bake into your compliance pack so regulators like ACMA and state liquor & gaming bodies are happy with your approach.

Regulatory & Responsible Gaming Notes for Australia

Remember: sports betting operators in Australia fall under state and federal regimes (ACMA for interactive stuff, and state regulators like Liquor & Gaming NSW or VGCCC depending on jurisdiction), and you must show you have customer protections and KYC/AML processes; keep a transparent incident log and show that you used BetStop and Gambling Help Online resources where relevant. The following final section gives you a short action plan to run today.

Action Plan: First 48 Hours After Detection (A$-aware)

1. Trigger incident channel and run synthetic checks (0–5 mins).
2. Enable CDN challenge rules and soft CAPTCHA on betting endpoints (5–15 mins).
3. Activate managed scrubbing if thresholds crossed (15–30 mins); remember your pre-authorised A$ emergency fund.
4. Switch to cached odds and queue bets; post clear banner & SMS to punters (30–60 mins).
5. Recon and reconcile refunds only after the queue clears; log everything for ACMA/state regulator reports (24–48 hrs).

Follow these steps and iterate on the runbook after each drill so your team loses less sleep when the next arvo storm hits, and remember local customer trust is as valuable as any technical fix which I’ll summarise next.

18+ only. Gamble responsibly. If you or someone you know needs support call Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858 or visit betstop.gov.au to learn about self-exclusion options. The technical recommendations above are defensive measures; they do not guarantee immunity from attacks and should be tested in your environment.

Sources

• ACMA guidance on online gambling regulation (public guidance and best practices)
• Industry reports on DDoS trends and mitigation — vendor whitepapers and scrubbing provider case studies

About the Author

I’m a Sydney-based security engineer with hands-on experience helping small Australian betting operators and pokie venues harden infrastructure, and I’ve run incident response drills across Melbourne and Brisbane teams. To see how licensed operators communicate during incidents, check out examples from known local brands such as pointsbet to adapt tone and timing for your customers. The next step is to book a tabletop drill for your team and test the checklist above so you’re not learning in public.