Posted on 12/12/2014 7:25:31 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
n February, Iranian hackers took down the computer system of gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire, wiping hard drives clean and shutting down email.
Las Vegas Sands, the world’s largest gaming company, was devastated by the attack.
But until a Bloomberg Businessweek report Thursday night, the company had never revealed the extent of the hack.
Coming months before the recent hack on Sony Pictures, the hit on Sands is now believed to be the first major destructive cyberattack on a U.S. business, although there are likely others that have gone unreported.
From the instant the offensive started, Las Vegas Sands suspected it was retaliation for Adelson’s hawkish stance on the Middle East. Adelson, of Jewish descent, contributes heavily to Republican causes and owns three news outlets in Israel.
Notably, at a panel at Yeshiva University in October 2013, Adelson suggested the U.S. should set off a nuclear warhead in the Iranian desert to convey power during its nuclear negotiations with Tehran.
The U.S. would then have the upper hand to say, “You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position,” Adelson told the crowd.
The comments raised eyebrows and even got a response from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who suggested America “should slap these prating people in the mouth and crush their mouths.”
Businessweek described Sands’s cyber defenses as thin, allowing the Iranian hackers to roam around the company’s networks for four months before launching their attack.
As of 2012, Sands only had five people protecting 25,000 computers. Although a 2013 upgrade and expansion was underway, it was on an 18-month rollout plan, and no match for coordinated cyber actors.
The attackers went in through Sands’ weakest link, its casino in Bethlehem, Penn. They slipped in through a vulnerability in the casino’s Web development server and started scraping up login credentials that allowed them to hop to the company’s major computer system.
From there, they were able to launch the malware, known as a wiper attack, that took down the entire network and erased some data. It was similar in style to the Sony attack.
But because the hackers didn’t get at some core Sands operations — namely gambling and hotel room swipe keys — the hit went unnoticed by the public until this week.
Lawmakers and intelligence officials have warned that destructive cyberattacks would soon start hitting the U.S. But until the Sony hack, Americans had not seen a large-scale, successful destructive attack carried out on U.S. soil.
The Sands hack raises questions about whether other companies have also covering up similar destructive offensives.
Lawmakers have pushed for industry to disclose more information about the cyber threats they are facing. But the private sector has resisted, arguing it needs protections from shareholder lawsuits before doing so.
Will this have an impact on Sheldon Adelson’s GOPe contributions?
All these companies should have learned from the Target fiasco.
The fact that he supports Republicans is probably why the Iranians targeted him.
a bit of doggerel....
Sheldon’s got a lotta dough
He needs to send them
StuxNet 2.0
The fact that he supports Republicans is probably why the Iranians targeted him.
He usually supports the McCains and the Jebs of the party. I have no use for him.
How do they know it was Iranians?
I seriously doubt this is the first. Maybe the first that week.
My business was hit by the “Crypto locker” hit. It came in through email, disguised as a UPS communication like we get every day. It encrypted all my hard drives in the whole business, every drive and wanted a ransom to get it back. I don't do ransoms so I lost thousands of pictures and other files that were not backed up except on network connected remote drives. Fortunately my business data was backed up on unconnected external devices and on paper, we mostly recovered without major loses but it did take a lot of time and effort to do so.
I suspect we were hit by Russians or someone in the Caucuses, whom ever it was I was not alone. I understand that thousands of companies paid the ransom and got their data back. It was only a few hundred dollars or so but I was unwilling to reward the thieves.
I'm hoping their criminal activity destroys them and causes a lot of pain and grief in the process.
What I have not understood is why the US government did nothing to go after these people. It was one of the largest crimes ever perpetuated against business in the US but our government did nothing to either stop it or punish it.
Like liberal Republicans are some threat to Iran.
” disguised as a UPS communication “
A few weeks ago, on my home computer, I got a message from DHL, stating that someone had sent me an overnight package, and if I wanted to track it, I had to enter my email address and my DHL password. I have never done any business with DHL, and was not expecting any deliveries from anyone!, so I had never had any sort of password with them, nor ever communicated with them before. Phishing? I deleted it, but am having some odd computer problems now.
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