Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
As a former reporter, I’ve seen my fair share of press releases. But one from a threat actor was definitely a new one for me last week.
ALPHV (aka BlackCat) publicly took credit for a massive cyber attack against MGM, a resort, gambling and sports betting company best known for its massive casinos. The attack took down slot machines, guest reservation systems, and more belonging to MGM, and the company is still feeling the effects as of Tuesday.
And despite every major news outlet reporting on the incident, the actor wanted to take messaging into its own hands and “clarify” what happened exactly. Attackers have occasionally posted updates and pseudo-press releases in the past, but this particular press release on ALPHV’s leak site (don’t worry I didn’t actually link to their site) was peak unintentional comedy to me.
For starters, the actor blamed MGM for not using their official communication channels to contact them to start negotiating a ransom payment:
“As they were not responding to our emails with the special link provided (In order to prevent other IT Personnel from reading the chats) we could not actively identify if the user in the victim chat was authorized by MGM Leadership to be present,” the statement reads.
They also said that, hypothetically, if personally identifiable infor ..
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