] Three weeks ago, in a stunning raid, Russian hackers ] seized control of the servers that support one of the ] Internet's largest online gaming operations, demanding a ] ransom. It was a real-life, high-tech version of the ] movie Ocean's Eleven. By the time the ransom was paid, ] one key server -- the one containing all operational data ] for 120 Internet gaming sites and a long list of ] consulting clients -- seemed to be stripped of its data. ] ] ] ] At stake were all the operational records of a gambling ] empire. "We didn't even have the names of customers," ] says Juan Bonilla, executive vice-president of Grafix ] Softech F.A. of San Juan, Costa Rica. "We lost ] everything." To make matters worse, little, if any, of ] the data had been backed up off-site. Grafix Softech was ] losing an estimated US$75,000 a day in profits, and the ] incident left it open to lawsuits from customers whose ] businesses relied on Grafix Softech's services. What ] could have been a major disaster became a bump in the ] corporate road. In an amazing feat of ingenuity, CBL Data ] Recovery Technologies Inc. of Markham, Ont., managed to ] recover all the lost data. It was a close call, admits ] Bill Margeson, president of CBL Russian hackers raid largest online gaming operation |