Popular Nigerian sports betting platform, Bet9ja, has confirmed it has gained control of its website days after it was hijacked by a cyber-criminal organisation, Russian Black Cat, last week. Its CEO, Ayo Ojuroye, said in a statement on Bet9ja’s official Twitter handle that the website is now under their control, allaying the fears of investors and customers alike.
“The past few days have been challenging for us as a business,” he said in the letter. “Many of our customers and stakeholders have had to deal with the inconvenience of not being able to access their accounts or place bets on the bet9ja.com platform.”
Bet9ja CEO confirmed that the hack was carried out by the cyber-criminal organisation. He added that his company has “taken steps to reduce and mitigate any risk to our network systems and operations,” adding that protecting their customers is important for the company.
Bet9ja had previously confirmed the hack in another letter published on Nairameterics last Thursday. The hack, widely reported on news sites, became a trend on social media when users found out they were unable to place any bets since Thursday last week.
In 2019, the football betting site was reported to have gathered up to 60 million users by opening shops across Nigeria – a number predicted to have risen to 80 million users. So, the hack was going to agitate quite a number of Nigerians who rely on the platform for their betting needs.
Customers who had bet and hadn’t received their money were stuck in limbo wondering what would be their fate if the site hadn’t come back up.
Hours after the news of the hijack broke last week, the management had said in the statement that they were “working tirelessly with our IT Team, independent forensics and cybercrime experts” to resolve the matter and get back to business.
While analysts and experts are yet to report on the financial impact of the hijack, the company would have lost millions as a 2018 report found out that Bet9ja makes at least $1 million dollars per month in Lagos only.
“You have our strongest assurances that we are in full control of the situation and that all accounts, data, and funds are safe and secure. Our best days still lie ahead,” Ojuroye said.
In a similar vein, the verified Twitter account of OPay, a popular fintech company in Nigeria, has been hacked.
After the account was hacked on April 6, it was used to promote a cloned website to mislead owners of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into giving up their assets.
The verified Twitter account has sent several tweets since Wednesday, tagging Twitter handles belonging to NFT owners and entrepreneurs.
On Wednesday, the hacked account tweeted, urging NFT owners to protect their NFTs by visiting a cloned website.
The authentic version of the cloned website, revoke.cash, is used to protect Ethereum token balances by revoking permissions previously granted to applications.
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