A land-based casino hacked via an aquarium thermometer

It's a very different heist from the ones we usually see in Hollywood movies. Here, no big arms carrying bags of greenbacks on their backs, nor ingenious plans to deceive the vigilance of surveillance systems, let alone opening an explosive safe. No, the tool on which the criminals relied to carry out their mischief is much simpler than that: it is an aquarium thermometer!

An attack in the spirit of the times

This is a story that is becoming more and more common. While this scenario was not so long ago science fiction, it is now possible for a seasoned hacker to break into a system thanks to connected objects.

Surveillance cameras, fridges, televisions: the objects on the networks of individuals and companies are more and more numerous to be connected to the internet. Often poorly or insufficiently secured, they constitute an ideal gateway for web criminals.

In 2017, cyber security specialists estimated that more than 8 billion objects connected to the internet. Other hackers had already used a similar process in 2016 to paralyze many American sites such as Twitter, Netflix and Amazon. These were then surveillance cameras that had been infected to relay attacks against the supplier of these internet behemoths. Surveillance cameras are, in fact, often configured to be installed and used as simply as possible: many of them were not even protected by a simple password, a boon for malicious people.

It is therefore a simple thermometer, placed in an aquarium in order to check the temperature of the water, which was used by scammers keen on new technologies in this story which concerns a terrestrial casino.

A booty in personal data

The thermometer casino, whose name has not been disclosed for reasons that we can easily imagine, had therefore thought carefully about securing its vaults, but had probably overlooked this unfortunate detail. It should be clarified that here, it was not a question of accessing the safe or the funds of the casino in question.

By managing to connect to the casino's internal network via this object, the cybercriminals managed to trace back to the players' database : a gold mine of personal data .

Their main objective: the list of the most important players, the rich and loyal customers of the casino in short. No bags of stolen greenbacks, therefore, but an almost more important concern: the personal data of these people are now wandering around in nature, potentially within reach of anyone.

This targeted hacking therefore entails the risks that can be imagined for casino customers: burglaries, threats or blackmail, identity theft...

The criminals and concealers of this data now have valuable information such as addresses, identity documents, status and gambling habits casino players.

If the casino has obviously not lost any money as a result of this hack, its loyal customers whose data has been stolen may well regret their sessions on the slot machines in the future!

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