A hacking group with members as young as 19 breached MGM’s digital systems, weeks after apparently forcing Caesars Entertainment to pay millions of dollars in ransom.R: Photo by George Rose/Getty Images L: Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment were compromised by data breaches within weeks of each other.
Scattered Spider, the hacking group, tricks people into handing over access to private systems.
A cybersecurity expert says Scattered Spider is comprised of mostly young adults from the US and UK.
Weeks after Caesars Entertainment reportedly ponied up a $15 million ransom to hackers, a group known as Scattered Spider has targeted another major US casino operator: MGM Resorts.
It breached the company’s internal networks and caused a series of digital outages — the MGM website was still down as of Thursday, and social media users were posting pictures of slot machines gone dark in Las Vegas.
Bloomberg reported that members of Scattered Spider used social engineering — a technique in which a hacker employs human interaction to gain access to a computer system. This can mean using an email phishing scheme or scam phone call to trick people into handing over the digital keys to a corporate network.
In the case of Caesars, the hackers made contact with an outside IT vendor as early as late August to eventually get into the casino operator’s systems, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Caesars eventually paid a $15 million ransom, CNBC reported.
On Sunday, the hacker group started to infiltrate MGM Resorts, leading to a shutdown of some of the brand’s casino and hotel computer systems, like its corporate email, restaurant reservation, hotel booking, and digital key card access, CNBC said. The hackers also asked for a ransom from MGM, Bloomberg reported, citing two people familiar with t ..
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