MGM Resorts’ hack fallout includes paper vouchers, cash bar

Scanning the largely empty casino floor at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Tuesday (Sept 12), Marina Lopez said a cyberattack on the property’s parent company, MGM Resorts International, has been a hassle.

Restaurants were only taking cash, as was the poolside bar: She had to pay cash for a margarita the previous day, too. But those annoyances were a bigger problem for guests who found many slot machines weren’t working, she said.

“People came to play, they couldn’t play and they left,” said Lopez, who is from Santa Cruz, California.

Two days into a cyberattack on Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts, the fallout at its properties along the city’s famous strip varied from casino to casino. Sportsbooks were closed at the Cosmopolitan and MGM Grand, and several guests said checking in took longer because staff was doing everything by hand, jotting down credit-card information on clipboards. Slot-machine attendants cashed out players the same way.

Many of the websites to MGM’s resorts remained unavailable on Tuesday.

Still, more than half of the guests interviewed at the Cosmopolitan and the Bellagio, which seemed largely unaffected, weren’t aware of the hack. And by midday Tuesday, credit cards were being accepted in at least some of MGM’s resorts.

Details of the attack remained scant, including who was behind it, their possible motive and the type of information the hackers may have obtained. The FBI office in Las Vegas was aware of the attack and assisting, an agency spokesperson said.

Shares of MGM fell 1.7% to US$41.99 (RM196.55) Tuesday in New York. That’s on top of a 2.4% loss Monday (Sept 11).

MGM Resorts shut down certain systems after discovering the attack and began an investigation with the help of external cybersecurity experts, according to a statement posted on social media. In another statement posted Monday evening, MGM said its resorts, including dining, entertainment and gaming, were “currently operational.”

But not without some snags.

A waiter at the Cosmopolitan, who asked not to be identified, said credit-card payments were working fine, but online orders and communications between properties remained down.

Traffic at the MGM Grand was noticeably light. A number of slot machines weren’t functioning, and an ATM machine wasn’t providing cash advances.

MGM Resorts was also the victim of a 2019 data breach that exposed personal information on as many as 10.6 million customers. – Bloomberg