French Euromillions Online Lottery Site Hacked

The French site of the Euromillions lottery was hacked during the weekend. The initial homepage was replaced by a quote from the Koran that condemned gambling.

The hackers of the website called themselves "Moroccanghosts", an unknown group. They could be some script kiddies according to the French gambling news.

The hackers posted Koranic verses that called gambling and alcohol the "works of the devil" which turn people away from God.

The Francaise des Jeux (FDJ), the company which runs Euromillions, scratch cards and Internet bingo in France and other European countries, informed that its other games were not affected.

The FDJ emphasized that none of its games nor any player data were compromised by hackers.

The Euromillions site was unavailable on Sunday evening, although the religious message was taken down and was replaced by a site inaccessibility error.

The FDJ is in "the process of being put back up", but as of Tuesday early morning, the Euromillions simply redirects to the FDJ corporate web page. The FDJ corporate site was also inaccessible on Sunday, although FDJ confirmed that it had not been attacked.

The Euromillions website operates under French gambling laws and its lottery is played in nine countries of the European Union. However, the FDJ page is not available in English, or any other European language for that matter.

It seems there is a lack of interpreters and good programmers in France. We are actually surprised that the country is using the same internet as the rest of the world, not some French development incompatible with anything else.