Hackers take down the US’s most famous casino and hotel chain – payment only with cash

In the Hollywood movie “Ocean’s Eleven”, a gang of criminals led by George Clooney and Brad Pitt try to break into the famous Bellagio casino hotel. Large amounts of cash from the two casinos The Mirage and MGM Grand are also stored in the underground vault.

More than twenty years later, those responsible for the casino and hotel chain are confronted with real criminals. The company had to shut down its servers on Tuesday evening.

According to the descriptions on the online platform The website was offline, the slot machines were out of service and guests could only pay with cash.

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That this was the work of a ransomware gang can be assumed based on the time when the unknown criminals made themselves known: the actual attack was launched on Sunday evening (US local time), so outside normal working hours.

Almost 15 billion in turnover

It is currently unclear whether the company has already received a ransom and is negotiating with the cyber criminals behind the scenes. No corresponding letter has yet been published on the relevant Darknet blackmail sites.

MGM Resorts is the largest employer in Nevada and operates the most casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. The company had total revenue of nearly $15 billion last fiscal year.

The outage is apparently also affecting MGM casinos in other US states, such as the Borgata in Atlantic City, the MGM Grand Detroit, the MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, the Beau Rivage in Mississippi, the Empire City Casino in New York City and the MGM Northfield Park . in Ohio.

PS: The last major cybersecurity incident at MGM Resorts occurred in 2019, when personal information of millions of hotel guests was stolen in a hacker attack. The data was later sold on Russian-language darknet forums. The extent is still unclear today.

Sources