A year after Cowboys Casino in Calgary suffered a massive data breach, the cybercriminals responsible for the attack have released personal information of the casino’s customers.
The data dump was carried out on Sunday; thousands of files supposedly containing the information of patrons, customer payouts, gambling habits, and the establishment’s “elite member list” were leaked to data-sharing website Pastebin. The hackers also issued a warning that even more information could be leaked next week.
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“The computer security at Cowboys Casino was non-existent and all data was ripe for the taking. We asked Cowboys Casino to fix the gapping [sic] holes in their system but our request was ignored for over a year,” the hackers said in an online post. “So we have decided to go public and release our first [very small sample] data dump. Hopefully now they will take their customers’ and employees’ privacy more seriously.”
The hackers’ post also pointed out that the data leaked Sunday was the first of four planned releases – and the smallest. The attackers threatened that they would continue to release the sensitive data in series until the casino fixes “its security holes.”
Cowboys Casino general manager Tyrone Waite told Calgary Herald that once the information was stolen, management knew that there would always be a chance that the data would be abused.
“It’s unfortunate it’s happened,” Waite said. “We’ve been working on this for a year and it’s always been in the back of our mind it could get out there at any time.”
Waite said that the casino is reaching out to those affected to inform them that their information may have been released online.
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