LAS VEGAS — The FBI and Secret Service are investigating the hacking of the Las Vegas Sands casino company’s websites, which remained out of service more than a day after they were hijacked.
The company’s corporate home page, as well as the pages of the Italian-themed Venetian and Palazzo casinos in Las Vegas, displayed a screen Wednesday that says the sites are down for maintenance and provides phone numbers for all Sands properties. The hacking also knocked out Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s email service and other internal systems.
Sands spokesman Ron Reese declined to say whether the company is aware of any credit card records being breached.
“While we have been able to confirm that certain core operating systems were not impacted by the hacking, the company remains focused on working through a step-by-step process to ascertain what, if any, additional systems may have impacted,” Reese said in a statement.
FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said the FBI and Secret Service were investigating.
Sands runs the largest casino in the world in the Chinese gambling enclave in Macau. It also owns hotel-casinos in Singapore and Bethlehem, Pa.
The Nevada State Gaming Control Board was also investigating the cyberattack.
The first sign that the company’s systems might have been breached came Monday morning, when the company’s email system went down, Reese said. The problem resolved itself but returned in the middle of the night. By Tuesday morning, hackers had taken control of all Sands sites, posting what looked like a clip-art collage featuring a map with images of flames where Sands casinos are located, a picture of Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson posing with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a message condemning the use of weapons of mass destruction. The hackers also posted employee Social Security numbers and signed their work, “Anti WMD Team.”
Adelson, who is known for having a fiery personality, has been outspoken in his support for Israel and in October floated the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran, saying strength was the only thing the country understands. During a forum at Yeshiva University in New York City, he described what he thought would happen if the U.S. began negotiations over the country’s nuclear program by launching a strike on the Iranian desert and threatening to bomb Tehran next.
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Hannah Dreier can be reached at https://twitter.com/hannahdreier .
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