[BreachExchange] Exclusive: Details of 10.6 million MGM hotel guests posted on a hacking forum

[Destry Winant]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-details-of-10-6-million-of-mgm-hotel-guests-posted-on-a-hacking-forum/

The personal details of more than 10.6 million users who stayed at MGM
Resorts hotels have been published on a hacking forum this week.

Besides details for regular tourists and travelers, included in the
leaked files are also personal and contact details for celebrities,
tech CEOs, reporters, government officials, and employees at some of
the world's largest tech companies.

ZDNet verified the authenticity of the data today, together with a
security researcher from Under the Breach, a soon-to-be-launched data
breach monitoring service.

A spokesperson for MGM Resorts confirmed the incident via email.

According to our analysis, the MGM data dump that was shared today
contains personal details for 10,683,188 former hotel guests.

Included in the leaked files are personal details such as full names,
home addresses, phone numbers, emails, and dates of birth.

ZDNet reached out to past guests and confirmed they stayed at the
hotel, along with their timeline, and the accuracy of the data
included in the leaked files.

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We got confirmation from international business travelers, reporters
attending tech conferences, CEOs attending business meetings, and
government officials traveling to Las Vegas branches.

MGM RESORTS SAYS THEY NOTIFIED CUSTOMERS LAST YEAR

Once we verified the data, ZDNet also reached out to MGM Resorts.

Within an hour after we reached out to the company, we were in a
conference call with the hotel chain's security team. Within hours,
the MGM Resorts team was able to verify the data and track it to a
past security incident.

An MGM spokesperson told ZDNet the data that was shared online this
week stems from a security incident that took place last year.

"Last summer, we discovered unauthorized access to a cloud server that
contained a limited amount of information for certain previous guests
of MGM Resorts," MGM told ZDNet.

"We are confident that no financial, payment card or password data was
involved in this matter."

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The hotel chain said it promptly notified all impacted hotel guests in
accordance with applicable state laws.

While we were not able to track down one of these notifications
personally, some users appear to have posted online about receiving
one in August last year.

In addition, MGM Resorts told us it retained two cybersecurity
forensics firms to conduct an internal investigation into last year's
server exposure.

"At MGM Resorts, we take our responsibility to protect guest data very
seriously, and we have strengthened and enhanced the security of our
network to prevent this from happening again," the company said.

According to Irina Nesterovsky, Head of Research at threat intel firm
KELA, the data of MGM Resorts hotel guests had been shared in some
closed-circle hacking forums since at least July, last year. The
hacker who released this information is believed to have an
association, or be a member of GnosticPlayers, a hacking group that
has dumped more than one billion user records throughout 2019.


However, while MGM's security incident went under the radar last year,
the publication of this data dump on a very popular and openly
accessibly hacking forum this week has brought it to many other
hackers' attention.

Under the Breach, the company that spotted this leak and notified this
reporter, was the one who highlighted the highly sensitive nature of
the breach.

The leaked data is a treasure trove for contact details for many
high-profile users, working for big tech firms and governments all
over the world. These users now face a higher risk of receiving
spear-phishing emails, and being SIM swapped, Under the Breach told
ZDNet.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, pop star Justin Bieber, and DHS and TSA
officials are some of the big names Under the Breach spotted in the
leaked files.

MGM Resorts told ZDNet that the data was old. We can confirm this
statement as from all the hotel guests we called today, none stayed at
the hotel past 2017. Some of the phone numbers we called were
disconnected, but many were also valid, and the right person answered
the phone.

The size and the severity of this MGM Resorts security incident pales
in comparison to the massive data breach that impacted Marriott hotels
in 2017, when the details of hundreds of millions of users were stolen
by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.