71–80 of 111 posts
This is a good example of the kind of case study I will point to when someone starts to get cranky with my unyielding principle of putting the entire business inside a single SQL database. When you have geo replicas and point-in-time restoration capabilities which can synchronously bring 100% of the business back from the dead in a matter of seconds/minutes... How many $8.4m days before a complete rewrite of all syst…
Imagine being one of the guys in charge of cybersecurity of MGM. I would dig a hole and hide.
Or they have been telling management for years that security needs to be improved and more spending is needed to do that but management declined to provide funding.
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Cyber privateering was mentioned like 10-12 years ago. Someone had a blog or similar referring to the 'Morgan doctrine'. Edit: I found it. It looks more professionally edited and lengthy than when I first came across it in 2010(!). Link: https://www.themorgandoctrine.com/2010/11/draft-01-cyber-pri... The Cyber Privateer Code (draft 02—updated on 6/28/2013): - Any unauthorized attempt to access your computer or phish…
Many of us foresaw this (and much worse) when we first heard about Bitcoin in 2009-2011. Yes, Bitcoin has its anonymity issues, but cryptocurrencies in general is what typically enables this kind of crime. Example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-13/caesars-e... https://archive.ph/8BCDb Caesars Entertainment Inc. paid tens of millions of dollars to hackers who broke into the company’s systems in recen…
Cash is equally as capable of this, though. The hackers in this situation could demand cash and practically nothing would change about the technical aspects of their attack.
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Many of us foresaw this (and much worse) when we first heard about Bitcoin in 2009-2011. Yes, Bitcoin has its anonymity issues, but cryptocurrencies in general is what typically enables this kind of crime. Example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-13/caesars-e... https://archive.ph/8BCDb Caesars Entertainment Inc. paid tens of millions of dollars to hackers who broke into the company’s systems in recen…
> I don't want to live in a world with 100% anonymous and untraceable payments. Cash is equally as capable of this, though. The hackers in this situation could demand cash and practically nothing would change about the technical aspects of their attack.
They would have to travel from e.g. Russia to Las Vegas to pick up the cash though. Or, I suppose, demand delivery of cash to Russia, or some other place. Whichever way, it's a lot easier for law enforcement. Suddenly a particular country is responsible.
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Casinos provide leisure and entertainment. If what you're actually trying to say is that they are overall a net harm, then I'd point out that imperial mercantilism was also quite harmful to many people. At least MGM hasn't overthrown any countries.
In exactly the same way a heroin dealer provides leisure and entertainment. Selling access to an inherently addictive substance should not be a for profit endeavor. The incentives are inherently biased towards harming people for profit.
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Revenue is a measure of income. Unless speaking about specific types of revenue or specific types of income, they are synonymous.
Accounts don't think revenue and income are synomymous: income is revenue minus expenses. Now if you were to say that profit and income are synonymous, that I might be okay with.
This is a good example of the kind of case study I will point to when someone starts to get cranky with my unyielding principle of putting the entire business inside a single SQL database. When you have geo replicas and point-in-time restoration capabilities which can synchronously bring 100% of the business back from the dead in a matter of seconds/minutes... How many $8.4m days before a complete rewrite of all syst…
I never like it when writers use the word "lose" to describe money not earned. Yeah, MGM is not earning as much as it could because of this attack. They are under pressure to settle with the attackers. Articles like this can increase that pressure. I'm glad that they aren't settling, and I'm certain that they will survive this attack.
A slightly more misleading use of "losing money" is for example when movie or music companies claim they are "losing" billions of dollars to piracy, when there is no reason to believe that every pirated copy would instead be purchased at full price, if only piracy were eliminated.
I'm curious if MGM fully understood their cyber risks. Many companies underestimate threats until something like this happens. After seeing MGM, if other hotels beef up security too (very likely), will overall costs for consumers go up?
> Many companies underestimate threats until something like this happens Speaking from my experience, many don't understand the threats even after an incident. The reaction is often to add 'more security' under any name. More restrictive policies, more scanning, more layers of MFA - just blindly layering on things because it's seen as 'more secure' without properly understanding how it affects risk is an awful approa…
They have an incredibly crusty, buggy billing system written in PowerBuilder, and I swear it's a holdover from the Voice stream days
Disclaimer: Worked there in Tech Support.