Tag Archive for: york
New York State Gaming Commission Is Latest Casino Hacking Target
First casinos, and now the regulators. It’s been a tough couple of months for cyber security teams in the casino industry. That continued over the weekend at the New York State Gaming Commission.
The state’s casino regulator was hacked, bringing some grief not just to the gaming commission, but also for some New York slot venues. The commission’s slot management system was left inoperable for a time on Oct. 17, affecting some operators.
“Everi, the licensed operator of New York’s video lottery gaming central system, experienced a cybersecurity event that remains under investigation,” commission representative Brad Maione told the New York Post. “The commission has no indication that personal identifiable information was compromised. The Commission continues to monitor the situation.”
Latest Casino Industry Entity Victimized by Cyber Attack
MGM Resorts was recently victimized in a cyber attack that crippled many of the company’s operations around the country, including slot machines. In Canada, Gateway Casinos experienced a similar issue in April, leading to the closure of several casinos north of the border.
Caesars Entertainment also saw a similar ransomware attack as well. That company chose instead to pay a $30 million ransom to regain access to its computer systems, according to the Wall Street Journal. That may have been the best financial decision, given MGM recent disclosure that the hack will cost the company upwards of $100 million before insurance payouts.
New York State Gaming Commission representatives don’t believe any personal data was retrieved by hackers during the Empire State attack. The commission continues to investigate, but the attack has been another wake-up call for some in the industry.
“We shut down for a brief period,” James Featherstonhaugh, a part owner of Saratoga Casino, told the Post. “It got cleared up fairly quickly. It was all the same issue. It got everyone’s attention.”
Prevention Steps
Cyber crimes have cost MGM, Caesars, and Gateway millions of dollars in lost revenue and additional IT work. As the industry faces a growing number of cyber security issues, some experts say additional planning and training could…
DiNapoli: Cybercrime in New York Rises 53%
NY’s Ransomware and Data Breaches Third Highest in Nation Over Six Years; Over $775 Million Lost in 2022 Alone
Cyberattacks in New York state increased 53% between 2016 and 2022, jumping from 16,426 incidents in 2016 to 25,112 in 2022. The number of attacks targeting critical infrastructure in New York state nearly doubled to 83 in the first half of 2023 compared to 48 during the entirety of last year, according to a report released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
Estimated losses in New York from cyberattacks in 2022 totaled over $775 million, while losses nationwide totaled $10.3 billion.
“Cyberattacks are a serious threat to New York’s critical infrastructure, economy and our everyday lives,” said DiNapoli. “Data breaches at companies and institutions that collect large amounts of personal information expose New Yorkers to potential invasions of privacy, identity theft and fraud. Also troubling is the rise in ransomware attacks that can shut down systems we rely on for water, power, health care and other necessities. Safeguarding our state from cyberattacks requires sustained investment, coordination, and vigilance.”
Relative to other states, New York had the third highest number of ransomware attacks (135) and corporate data breaches (238) in 2022, trailing only California and Texas for ransomware attacks and California and Florida for corporate data breaches. New York also had the fourth-highest number of cybercrime victims in the nation in 2022 with losses skyrocketing 632% since 2016.
The two most attacked critical infrastructure sectors through ransomware and data breaches in New York were Healthcare and Public Health (9) and Financial Services (8). Commercial Facilities and Government Facilities (7) tied for third.
Combatting the Threat
Securing critical infrastructure from cyberattacks will require sustained investment, coordination and vigilance. In 2022, the Governor appointed a state chief cyber officer to lead cross-agency efforts to combat cyber threats and improve the state’s critical infrastructure assets’ cybersecurity. The cyber chief leads a newly created Joint Security Operations…
The Long Island Press Amplifies a RevBits White Paper that Explores a Devastating 2022 Cyber Hack on the Computer Systems of Suffolk County New York
Mineola, N.Y., United States:
RevBits, a cyber security solution company based on Long Island, New York, completed a review of the 2022 Suffolk County, New York, cyber hack that rendered government systems largely inoperable for months, affecting municipal work and citizen interaction with their county government. The RevBits white paper, Suffolk Hack Part of a Chinese Plot?, was recently profiled in a companion piece in the September edition of The Long Island Press.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230919470113/en/
One year ago, on September 8, 2022, an anonymous email appeared on the Suffolk County government computer system announcing a devastating hack: unnamed thieves had sized four terabytes of data – some 300 million pages of detailed government information, including highly confidential personal information regarding 26,000 current and former employees as well as banking and personal information related to more than 400,000 people who have received traffic and parking tickets over the past years.
The hack brought government systems to a halt: crippling the billion-dollar real estate industry, sideswiping tens of millions of dollars in vital payments to mom-and-pop suppliers and disabled key functions of the county’s 911 emergency system.
The RevBits white paper reveals that top US law enforcement and intelligence officials are convinced the intrusion was executed by Chinese government hacking teams as part of Beijing’s drive toward global supremacy by 2049.
The white paper, initiated by RevBits CEO David Schiffer, who founded and headed Safe Banking Systems prior to running RevBits, is a veteran of the cyber-world, having intersected with many of the biggest computer cases of the past decades from Kremlin money laundering to security lapses at the FAA. “This hack hits close to home for us – we are a Long Island-based company, and I have been a Long Island resident nearly my whole life,” said Schiffer. “The scourge of state-sponsored hacking needs to be taken seriously by companies but, even…