Field guide
DDoS Extortion / Ransomware
How it works
Criminal groups launch distributed denial-of-service attacks or deploy ransomware against online casino operators, demanding payment to restore service or decrypt data. Attackers flood casino servers with traffic during peak betting times (major sporting events, weekend evenings) or encrypt critical databases. They demand ransom in cryptocurrency. Some threaten to release stolen customer data if unpaid.
On the record
MGM Resorts estimated that a September 2023 cyberattack would cut Adjusted Property EBITDAR by about $100 million, plus under $10 million in one-time costs, and said it shut systems to contain the attack. One news report called the outage 10 days and another nine. The company filing did not call it ransomware. Caesars Entertainment’s SEC filing described a 2023 social-engineering attack on an outside IT vendor and said the company took steps to have stolen data deleted. It did not state a ransom sum. News reports citing unnamed sources said the payment was about $15 million. SBTech detected a ransomware attack on 27 March 2020, during its combination with DraftKings, and shut its data centres. Many clients were offline for about six days, and some United States sites longer. The $30 million was an indemnity reserve, $10 million in cash and $20 million in stock, for claims from that incident, not a fund spent on remediation.
Detection & preventionADVISORY
The paid halfHow a monitoring room catches ddos extortion / ransomware, and what stops it recurring, written for the desk, not the reader.
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Published as a detection reference for surveillance, compliance and gaming-operations professionals. Thresholds and tuning are set by the property. Nothing here is instruction: the method is described so it can be recognised.