Cowboys Casino documents, leaked online

One year after the Cowboys Casino in Calgary data was breached, hackers have leaked the documents on payouts and gambling habits online.

Canada.- The Cowboys Casino in Calgary was victim of a cyberattack last year and it’s still suffering the consequences: hackers have decided to leak personal information about hundreds of patrons and staff online. There’s also thousands of documents that include from payouts to gambling habits information that were leaked to Pastebin, a data-sharing website.

The personal data breach was discovered by Cowboys Casino and announced in June 2016. Back then, it issued notifications to over 14 thousand customers, clients and staff in order to inform them they could be included among the hack’s victims.

Tom Keenan, a computer expert of the University of Calgary said to globalnews.ca: “A year ago, Cowboys was hacked, and now what’s happened is that data is resurfacing. People really need to be worried because it’s very, very potent information that can be used for identity theft.”

He also explained that casinos have a lot of information on people, including driver’s license, winnings, among other things. They have to under the financial tracking rules that requires them to build a database of that.

Hackers haven’t leaked all the information they got during last year’s hack and are demanding that the casino makes changes to it’s security. If the Cowboys Casino doesn’t comply with their request, they’re threatening to release more data next week.

Keenan main suspect would be someone linked to a security company. He said “it looks like somebody wanted them to have better security” but the casino wouldn’t improve -or spend on- it. That’s why the computer expert believes that the hackers want to “catch their attention.”

“Somebody out there has a real hate-on for this casino – and just the like the Sony pictures thing, where they released a lot of emails, it looks like they’re going to be releasing emails too,” he added.

The breach is under investigation by the Calgary police and Staff Sgt. Cory Dayle has encouraged people to keep their private information to themselves unless it’s “absolutely essential to the service” they’re seeking. “Your most private, personal information — we should keep it like it’s money. Keep it in the bank unless it really has to be given out,” he added.