Iranian Hackers Retaliate Against Sands Casino With $40m Cyber-attack

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Sunday, December 14th, 2014 | Written by Stephen Smith

US online poker players may be relieved to know that they are not the only ones to be subjected to Las Vegas Sands (LVS) CEO Sheldon Adelson‘s warped sense of logic and moral hypocrisy, and while the 81 year-old billionaire isn’t trying to protect his casino empire from the perceived threat of online gambling, he is also busy finding other targets around the world to attack. However, Adelson’s comments earlier this year about dropping an atom bomb on Iran cost him more than he could have expected, $40 million more, in fact, as that was apparently the cost to his business after Iranian hackers decided to retaliate with a cyber-attack on the Las Vegas Sands Corp systems.

Origins Of The Attack

Casino magnate Adelson owns 52% of Las Vegas Sands, three news outlets in Israel, and has a personal fortune valued at $27.4 billion. Adelson is also known for his outspoken views, and last October he made provocative comments about Iran whilst attending a panel discussion entitled “Will Jews Exist?” at the Yeshiva University’s Manhattan campus. During the discussion, Adelson was asked how he would deal with the threat of an Iranian nuclear program, to which he suggested dropping an atom bomb on Tehran, a city of 8.3 million human beings.

“You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ And so there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development,” said Adelson.

LVS Technology Systems Down

Unsurprisingly, Sheldon Adelson’s extreme views received wide spread condemnation in Iran, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei suggesting two weeks later that the USA should “slap these prating people in the mouth and crush their mouths.”

It wasn’t until February 10th, however, that Adelson got a real taste of the bad feelings his comments had created, and that night offices of the Las Vegas Sands Corp were plunged into chaos after computers and most phones went down, e-mails didn’t work, and technology systems used to run the $14 billion enterprise ground to a halt. Security staff also realized that LVS sensitive files were being downloaded. Meanwhile, Adelson’s casinos were also affected, and describing the panic and chaos which ensued, an article on businessweek.com, read:

“In an effort to save as many machines as they could, IT staffers scrambled across the casino floors of Sands’ Vegas properties—the Venetian and its sister hotel, the Palazzo—ripping network cords out of every functioning computer they could find, including PCs used by pit bosses to track gamblers and kiosks where slots players cash in their tickets.”

Personal Message For Adelson

The very next day, the hackers then turned their attention to Las Vegas Sands’ websites, and together the two attacks took out around three-quarters of the company’s servers, and cost an estimated $40 million to rebuild. As well as posting sensitive information on the LVS website, including social security numbers and email addresses, a personal messages were also left for Adelson, with one stating: “Encouraging the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, UNDER ANY CONDITION, is a Crime, signed, the Anti WMD Team,” while another warned: “Damn A, Don’t let your tongue cut your throat.”

LVS Slow To Adapt To Cyber Threats

Whilst Sheldon Adelson is physically well guarded, with the Sands paying around $3.3 million to former U.S. Secret Service and Mossad agents to protect him, his company has been slow to guard against possible attacks by cyber-criminals. In January, for instance, hackers targeted the Sands Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, which runs its own computer network, and were subsequently able to access almost all the operation’s files. Other attacks have since been reported by Sands, highlighting the dangers all businesses could potentially face in the future, and it has even been suggested victims may soon be forced to defend themselves from cyber threats by adopting similar techniques in an equivalent to the US stand-your-ground law.