Gamblers in British Columbia are being invited to place their bets as the B.C. Lottery Corporation rolls the dice again on its new online casino.
Launched with much fanfare over its claim to be the first website in North America to offer legal casino-style games, the PlayNow.com website was yanked on its first day live because players got a little too lucky: A technical glitch let them gamble with other people's money.
"I don't think there's any question that we have to work hard to rebuild (customers') trust," BCLC president Michael Graydon said Thursday, on announcing the house should be back open for games including blackjack, roulette and craps at 7 p.m. PT.
It took almost another 12 hours to get the PlayNow.com website up and running but players were able to sign on just before 7 a.m. Friday morning. Calls to the lottery corporation seeking information about the delay were not immediately returned.
The site's security breach in mid-July impacted 134 player accounts, of which 12 had some personal information viewed by others, Graydon said. In some cases, the users were able to see the other person's account balance and personal information.
"We reacted very quickly once we saw the problem, shut the system down to protect our customers and the efforts we've put in place over the past few weeks in mitigating the problem have all been directed at ensuring the integrity of our customers."
He said no players were "adversely impacted" financially, and the BCLC has provided credit monitoring services to all 12 people who had their information viewed.
But the corporation did take estimated gambling revenue losses of $150,000 for everyday the site was down, he said. He wouldn't give a figure of how much it cost to investigate and implement a solution.
Pin-pointing exactly what went wrong took some technical sleuthing, Graydon said. It took about six days to identify the root cause, what he called "data crossover."
"A default configuration setting designed and packaged by the server software provider created a vulnerability within the server environment, allowing the incorrect assignment of user information," he said, adding that website performance issues and high traffic loads contributed.
Once that was sorted out, he said a fix itself was pretty simple.
BCLC then conducted a "rigorous" four-part external review and regulatory approval process before wagering another go.
That included getting the green light from the provincial privacy watchdog, who accepted findings from an independent security expert on the cause of the bug.
B.C. Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she's "satisfied" the problem has been fixed.
"I have no evidence there are further problems with the BCLC site, but we are doing a fuller investigation and I think there are some lessons learned," she said. "We want to make sure that all of the proper policies and controls and audits are in place on the site."
Results of the broader investigation, aiming to determine whether the site has appropriate levels of security in place to protect personal information, could take up to two months, she said.
In a letter to Graydon, an official with the ministry of housing and social development, which oversees the gaming regulator, said it has provided oversight of the activity to rectify the problem and approved a re-launch.
Opposition New Democrat gaming critic Shane Simpson said the security breach is just another in a series of huge concerns created by the BCLC for British Columbians.
"It's really important now that the government do everything it can to restore the public's confidence, and that means being open and transparent about what's going on at the lottery corporation, where it seems to be one bungle after another."
