Major cyber attacks on Las Vegas casinos making slot and ATM machines unusable
Two major casinos in Las Vegas have fallen victim to a cybersecurity breach that halted operations, rendering slot machines and ATM machines unusable and making customers fear their personal data may have been stolen.
Dulce Martinez, 45, said she saw a persistent error message on Monday as she tried to access her casino rewards account to book her accommodation for an upcoming business trip. As her booking could not go through, she went on Facebook where she was hoping to find information about the issue on a group for MGM Resorts International loyalty members.
It was at that moment that the publicist, from Los Angeles, learnt the largest casino owner in Las Vegas had fallen victim to a cybersecurity breach. When she checked her bank statements for the credit card linked to her loyalty account, she noticed four transactions - from $9.99 (£8) to $46 (£37) - that she did not recognise.
She then cancelled her credit card and signed up for a credit report monitoring program, which will cost her $20 (£16) monthly, as she was worried about what other information the hackers may have stolen. She said: "It's been kind of an issue for me, but I'm now monitoring my credit, and now I'm taking these extra steps."
MGM Resorts said the incident began last Sunday, affecting reservations and casino floors in Las Vegas and other states. Videos on social media showed video slot machines that had gone dark. Some customers said their hotel room cards weren't working, others said they were cancelling their trips this weekend.
Dancing with Wolves actor arrested for sex abuse and accused of running cult
The situation entered its sixth day on Friday, with booking capabilities still down and MGM Resorts offering penalty-free room cancelations through September 17. Brian Ahern, a company spokesperson, declined to say what information had been compromised in the breach.
By Thursday, Caesars Entertainment - the largest casino owner in the world - confirmed it had also been hit by a cybersecurity attack. The casino giant said its casino and hotel computer operations were not disrupted but could not say with certainty that personal information about tens of millions of its customers was secure following the data breach.
The security attacks that triggered an FBI probe shattered a public perception that casino security requires an "Oceans 11"-level effort to defeat it. "When people think about security, they are thinking about the really big super-computers, firewalls, a lot of security systems," said Yoohwan Kim, a computer science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose expertise includes network security.
Kim said that casino giants like MGM Resorts and Caesars are protected by sophisticated - and expensive - security operations, but no system is perfect. "Hackers are always fighting for that 0.0001% weakness," Kim said. "Usually, that weakness is human-related, like phishing."
Tony Anscombe, the chief security official with the San Diego-based cybersecurity company ESET, said it appears the invasions may have been carried out as a "socially engineered attack," meaning the hackers used tactics like a phone call, text messages or phishing emails to breach the system. "Security is only as good as the weakest link, and unfortunately, as in many cyberattacks, human behavior is the method used by cybercriminals to gain the access to a company's crown jewels," Anscombe said.
As the security break-ins left some Las Vegas casino floors deserted this week, a hacker group emerged online, claiming responsibility for the attack on Caesars Entertainment's systems and saying it had asked the company to pay a $30million (£24million) ransom fee.
It has not officially been determined whether either of the affected companies paid a ransom to regain control of their data. But if one had done so, the experts said, then more attacks could be on the way. "If it happened to MGM, the same thing could happen to other properties, too," said Kim, the UNLV professor. "Definitely more attacks will come. That's why they have to prepare."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
