Just a week after a record flash flood turned Las Vegas blvd into the Suez Canal, The Las Vegas strip is suffering from a wave of cyber terrorism.
On Sunday Sept. 10th, MGM Officials released a notice via twitter, reporting to guests that a system wide outage was affecting the Bellagio and other resorts. Guest payments were limited to cash only, digital room keys were disabled. By monday morning, the parking system was offline, and digital gambling halted.
MGM Resorts reports that a cyber attack had significantly disrupted all 31 properties across the United States, with ransomware most likely the culprit. Ransomware, is a type of malware that encrypts the data of a user or organization, denying access until the user pays the ransom. A company the size of MGM must report such an attack to the SEC and gaming commissions. Through the public findings, a Bloomberg report has disclosed that Caesars Entertainment was hit with a similar attack last week, forking over close to 15 million dollars to hackers who held their loyalty club data hostage.
The attack has been credited to a ransomware group called ALPHV or Blackcat, according to malware archive VX-Underground. The company valued at 33 Billion, fell prey to basic method of social engineering. Starting with Linkedin, an IT worker from MGM was identified and impersonated during a 10 minute phone call to the IT Helpdesk, giving them access to the usernames and passwords needed to begin their digital infiltration.
Multiple video clips shared on twitter, show a que of guest waiting to check in at The Excalibur that rivals Space Mountain. MGM is no stranger to these attacks. Years ago a data breach of nearly 10.7 million users has entrenched MGM with litigation that continues to this day.
According to Bing : “BlackCat, also known as AlphaV is a ransomware group that has been active since at least November 2021. It is considered one of the most sophisticated ransomware groups. BlackCat is a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) that has compromised at least 60 entities”
ALPHV posts files stolen from victim organizations on the dark web. As of 09/14 MGM has not been listed. It has not been determined what data if any has been extracted from MGM systems.
MGM Resorts released a statement Thursday that gaming machines have come back online, and updated their privacy policy
Via the TechCrunch the Blackcat has released its own statement however
“If you have money, we want it”