Tag: Stole | Page 2

Caesars Entertainment says hackers stole customer data as MGM recovers from cyberattack

September 18, 2023/in Computer Security

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (CBS/CNN) — Hackers stole Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers from a “significant number” of loyalty program customers of Caesars Entertainment, the hospitality and casino giant said Thursday.

The disclosure comes as another big casino brand, MGM Resorts, is recovering from its own apparent cyberattack in which guests on Monday reported being unable to make room charges and access their rooms with their digital keys.

MGM Resorts International owns and operates The Borgata in Atlantic City, and Caesars has a location on Pacific Avenue in the Jersey Shore gambling hub. The gaming floor at the Borgata is back open, but some events including a $1.4 million prize drawing are postponed, according to a notice sent to MGM Rewards members.

The MGM Rewards app as of Friday, Sept. 15, included a notice it was “undergoing maintenance” making digital hotel room keys unavailable.

The pair of hacks has put a spotlight on the computer defenses of the multibillion-dollar casino and hospitality business in Las Vegas, which are ripe targets for cybercriminals to extort.

Caesars Entertainment, which owns famous hotel-casinos such as Caesars Palace, confirmed on Sept. 7 that the hackers had stolen a copy of the customer loyalty program database, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The hackers broke into computer systems via “a social engineering attack” on an IT support contractor, according to the filing.

“We have taken steps to ensure that the stolen data is deleted by the unauthorized actor, although we cannot guarantee this result,” Caesars Entertainment said. The company did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions as to what steps were taken and whether they included paying a ransom.

For its part, MGM Resorts has repeatedly referred to a “cybersecurity issue” in describing the disruption to some of its computer systems, but the incident has the hallmarks of a cyberattack.

“We continue to work diligently to resolve our cybersecurity issue while addressing individual guest needs promptly,” MGM Resorts said in a statement on Thursday morning. The company said on Monday, when news of the incident broke, that it had shut down certain…

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Microsoft reveals how hackers stole its email signing key… kind of

September 8, 2023/in Computer Security

A series of unfortunate and cascading mistakes allowed a China-backed hacking group to steal one of the keys to Microsoft’s email kingdom that granted near unfettered access to U.S. government inboxes. Microsoft explained in a long-awaited blog post this week how the hackers pulled off the heist. But while one mystery was solved, several important details remain unknown.

To recap, Microsoft disclosed in July that hackers it calls Storm-0558, which it believes are backed by China, “acquired” an email signing key that Microsoft uses to secure consumer email accounts like Outlook.com. The hackers used that digital skeleton key to break into both the personal and enterprise email accounts of government officials hosted by Microsoft. The hack is seen as a targeted espionage campaign aimed at snooping on the unclassified emails of U.S. government officials and diplomats, reportedly including U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

How the hackers obtained that consumer email signing key was a mystery — even to Microsoft — until this week when the technology giant belatedly laid out the five separate issues that led to the eventual leak of the key.

Microsoft said in its blog post that in April 2021, a system used as part of the consumer key signing process crashed. The crash produced a snapshot image of the system for later analysis. This consumer key signing system is kept in a “highly isolated and restricted” environment where internet access is blocked to defend against a range of cyberattacks. Unbeknownst to Microsoft, when the system crashed, the snapshot image inadvertently included a copy of the consumer signing key 1️⃣ but Microsoft’s systems failed to detect the key in the snapshot 2️⃣.

The snapshot image was “subsequently moved from the isolated production network into our debugging environment on the internet connected corporate network” to understand why the system crashed. Microsoft said this was consistent with its standard debugging process, but that the company’s credential scanning methods also did not detect the key’s presence in the snapshot image 3️⃣.

Then, at some point after the snapshot image was moved to…

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