Hackers Target Casinos

Outages at a number of hotels and casinos owned by hospitality giant MGM Resorts stretched into their fourth day following a ransomware attack earlier this week that forced it to shut down large parts of its internal network. Guests reported hourlong waits at front desks, inoperable slot machines, and more, with issues impacting locations from Las Vegas to New York. Officials linked the hack to a group known as Scattered Spider, a US- and UK-based collective said to be made up of 19- to 22-year-olds. Reports suggest a fairly nontechnical approach was used to gain system entry—hackers called the company's help desk and imitated an employee found on LinkedIn, requesting assistance in accessing their employee account. Also yesterday, reports surfaced that the same group successfully hacked Caesars Entertainment, with the company paying $15M in cyber ransom.