Invaders warn Adelson, “Don’t let your tongue cut your throat”
Hackers successfully attacked the websites of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. last week, taking over the home pages of resorts in Las Vegas, Pennsylvania, Singapore and Macau. Five days later, the sites were still down, and there was no estimate about when they would return.
The unidentified invaders posted threatening remarks aimed at Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson. Last October during a panel discussion at Yeshiva University in New York, the 80-year-old billionaire criticized the buildup of armaments in Iran. “We mean business,” said Adelson, an outspoken advocate for the state of Israel. “You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.”
Sands spokesman Ron Reese later said the statements were “hyperbole.”
The hackers listed personal information from the company, such as employee Social Security numbers, phone numbers, emails and job titles. By Thursday, the FBI and Secret Service were on the case, reported ABC News. Fortunately for Sands patrons, the same day state gaming regulators said the hackers did not steal any patron data, including credit card information.
Last December, Las Vegas-based Affinity Gaming’s credit-card files were hacked. Affinity told its 300,000 customers they were vulnerable to identity theft, and to take action to prevent it.
“The Affinity case looks a lot different,” A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, told the Associated Press. “That’s more akin to what happened with Target. But that’s not what happened at Sands according to our information.”??
The first sign of a cyber-attack came Monday morning, when the Sands’ email system crashed. By Tuesday, the hackers had taken over all the company’s websites. The sites were taken down and remained inactive for several days, and anyone accessing the home pages found error messages instead. By Thursday, the Sands reported that it was making progress toward restoring service and repairing its internal systems in the United States.??
No one took immediate responsibility for the attack. But a screen shot from the hackers included the signature “Anti-WMD Team.” The hackers also seemed to clearly respond to Adelson’s comments about Iran. ??
“Damn A, don’t let your tongue cut your throat,” they wrote. “Encouraging the use of weapons of mass destruction, under any conditions, is a crime.”
??Before the Sands’ Bethlehem site went down, an image appeared of Adelson and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Allentown Morning Call. The web page also included a map of the world that included flames in the locations of U.S. casinos owned by the Sands Corp.??
Adelson, listed by Forbes as the 11th richest person in the United States, has a net worth of $28.5 billion. He is Las Vegas Sands’ largest shareholder, controlling more than 53 percent of the company.??
He is also a major Republican Party donor, and has invested heavily in the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling. Adelson has promised to “will spend whatever it takes” to kill i-gaming legislation in the U.S.??
“Somebody like Google or Facebook, they’ve got a billion customers hitting them every day,” Adelson told Politico magazine in a recent interview. “They’ll come in there, they’ll squash the other guys like you squash the little ant running across the table or the floor. And that’s going to be the end of all of it.”
??In the aftermath of the cyber-attack, when the websites were down, customers continued to make reservations through third-party sites.
