Bill Hornbuckle says MGM did not pay ransom for cyber attack
At G2E Las Vegas, MGM’s CEO spoke about the cyber attack that cost the casino operator $100m.
US.- MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle has provided more details about the September cyber attack that affected the company. Speaking at G2E Las Vegas, he said the company did not pay ransom.
On September 10, a cyber attack affected some of MGM Resorts International’s computer systems in the US. Hornbuckle, who appeared as a keynote speaker on the second day of the G2E Las Vegas, said: “This is probably going to cost us in the range of $100m. It is covered by cyber insurance, thankfully. You don’t wish this on anybody. It happened to hit us. It was partially socially engineered. And for the couple of weeks to our company, it was devastating.”
He added: “We found ourselves in an environment where for the next four or five days, with 36,000 hotel rooms and some regional properties, we were completely in the dark. I mean, literally the telephones, the casino system, the hotel system, the key system, and I could go on and on and on, were not functioning.”
“We did not pay ransom, not that that’s the defining moment in one of these things. I know people say don’t pay ransom. But the way this came at us and the velocity at which it came at us, we reacted quickly. We protected data. We find ourselves now a couple of weeks into this thing fully functioning. We have all our commercial systems back.”
It was reported that the hacker group Scattered Spider, also known as UNC3944, could have been behind the cyberattack against the company. The FBI has begun an investigation.
