Security News > 2021 > May > Mexico walls off national lottery sites after ransomware DDoS threat
Access to Mexico's Lotería Nacional and Pronósticos lottery websites are now blocked to IP addresses outside of Mexico after a ransomware gang threatened to perform denial of service attacks.
Lotería Nacional is the government-run national lottery system of Mexico, operating under Mexico's Ministry of Finance.
Today, these sites are no longer accessible to IP addresses outside of Mexico, and connections to the site will now time out, as shown below.
With the help of Hiram Alejandro, Director of Information at cybersecurity firm Seekurity, BleepingComputer confirmed that these sites are only accessible from IP addresses in Mexico.
It is believed that the Mexican government has intentionally walled off the Lotería Nacional and Pronósticos websites to prevent the distributed denial of service attacks by the Avaddon ransomware gang.
By blocking international access to the Mexican lottery sites, the government can effectively mitigate the attacks and easily block any devices in Mexico that may be part of the attack.