‘American hotel chain Caesars paid millions to hackers who stole data’
Caesars Entertainment, an American chain of hotels and casinos, may have paid ‘tens of millions’ to ransomware group Scattered Spider. This is reported by the Bloomberg news agency. Hackers are said to have threatened to publish company data.
Caesars Entertainment is said to have been targeted by Scattered Spider, also known as UNC 3944, since late August. The group managed to gain access to the company’s networks through social engineering. She got according to Bloomberg access to a third-party vendor’s network before gaining access to Caesars Entertainment’s own networks.
Scattered Spider is said to have threatened to put Caesars Entertainment data online. The company then paid the cyber criminals ‘tens of millions of dollars’, insiders report to the news agency. According to The Wall Street Journal the company paid “approximately half of the $30 million ransom demanded.”
Caesars has now confirmed the data breach. According to the chain, the hackers obtained data from the database of its loyalty program through social engineering. This includes, for example, driver’s license numbers and possibly social security numbers of ‘a significant number of members in the database’. The company has seen no indications that passwords, bank account information or payment card information from members were also obtained.
Caesars said it has “taken steps to ensure that the unauthorized party deletes the stolen data.” The company seems to confirm that it has paid the ransom, although this is not specifically stated. The company says it cannot guarantee that the data has actually been deleted.
Another casino group, MGM Resorts International, announced earlier this week to have been hacked. As a result, that company’s systems were down, including the gambling machines in its casinos and the booking systems for its hotels and restaurants. There were also problems with the company’s digital room keys and email addresses. On social media his images can be seen of empty casinos with non-working slot machines.
Sources tell Reuters that Scatterred Spider is also behind this attack on MGM, although the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group has now claimed responsibility. The FBI previously announced that it was investigating this cyber attack.