Crown blackmailed by Russian hackers
Crown Entertainment Group is being blackmailed by a Russian cyber gang.
The gambling giant has been hacked and is now investigating the potential data breach after ransomware gang Cl0p posted on the dark web that it had accessed Crown’s data.
Cl0p has sent a ransom demand.
Crown has alerted police and the gambling regulator and is now determining what data may have been breached.
The Melbourne casino is apparently just one of 130 companies compromised by Cl0p, which exploited a weakness in third party GoAnywhere file transfer software.
Rio Tinto Australia, Proctor & Gamble and the University of Melbourne have also been affected.
“Crown is one of many organisations who use the third-party file transfer service GoAnywhere, which has been impacted by a data breach globally,” a spokesman told The Australian.
“We were recently contacted by a ransomware group who claim they have illegally obtained a limited number of Crown files.
“We are investigating the validity of this claim as a matter of priority.
“We can confirm no customer data has been compromised and our business operations have not been impacted.
“We are continuing to work with law enforcement and have notified our gaming regulators as part of the ongoing investigation and will provide relevant updates, as necessary.”
Many companies use secure file transfer system GoAnywhere, supplied by US cyber firm Fortra, which now seems less secure.
Irit Jackson, 28th March 2023
