Behind the Betting Wheel: How Illegal Gambling Sites Hide Serious Cyber Threats

A new report from security firm Infoblox has exposed a hidden danger lurking behind seemingly harmless Chinese-language gambling and adult entertainment websites. While these sites appear to be low-quality entertainment or illegal gambling operations, researchers found that some double as command-and-control infrastructure for espionage and malware distribution, including activity linked to North Korean money laundering schemes.

Infoblox tracks roughly 1.7 million of these Chinese-language casino domains, many of which share common website templates, making them hard to tell apart. Notably, some of this infrastructure is hosted through major US cloud providers including Amazon, Microsoft, Cloudflare, and Google, likely through a practice known as 'infrastructure laundering,' where hosting resellers rent legitimate cloud IP addresses and pass them on to clients running illegal operations.

The report also highlights a related scam known as 'scambling,' where visitors place bets on rigged gambling sites but are unable to withdraw any winnings. A recent United Nations report found that online scams across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand caused losses of up to $114.1 billion in 2025, underlining how interconnected and lucrative this criminal infrastructure has become.