Rugrats: how teenagers used threats to extract millions from Las Vegas casinos

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Psychological pressure on casino employees helped the hackers achieve their goal.

A hacking group made up mostly of young people is behind a number of attacks on Las Vegas entertainment companies, according to new findings from Microsoft's Threat Intelligence and Incident Response team. The group (Octo Tempest, 0ktapus, Scattered Spider, UNC3944) used not only social engineering techniques, but also threats of violence to lure out the credentials of their victims.

The main targets of hackers are technical support staff, whom they use social engineering methods to obtain the information necessary for hacking. However, in a number of cases the group resorted to more radical methods, including threatening violence against relatives of victims.

Example of threats against victims

Research has shown that the majority of participants in this group are native English speakers under the age of 20. The activity of attackers has especially intensified since 2022, when they began to actively engage in intercepting SIM cards (SIM Swapping, SIM swap) and seizing accounts in order to steal cryptocurrencies.

The cybercrime group has gained attention through a number of successful attacks on companies such as Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts. The attacks led to huge financial losses: the Caesars Palace casino, according to unconfirmed reports, paid the extortionists about $15 million, while MGM's losses exceeded $100 million. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg

. In addition to Las Vegas resorts, the group is credited with attacks on major corporations such as Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Rockstar and Samsung. A cybersecurity expert who preferred to remain anonymous said the cybersecurity industry made a mistake by underestimating young and talented hackers.

Microsoft researchers warn of the possibility of Com collaborating with other, more sophisticated criminal groups, which could lead to even larger and more complex attacks in the future.
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