Dozens of slot machines went down at The LINQ Casino in Las Vegas over the weekend and speculations quickly emerged that those might have been hacked, Mashable reports citing information from a person who was on the gaming floor at the time of the odd occurrence.
It is interesting to note that DEF CON, known to be the world’s longest running and one of the world’s largest hacking conferences, was taking place right across the street at Caesars Palace at the same time. Suggestions popped that a conference attendee might have been up to some major mischief, meddling with the gambling devices.
Matt Anderson, a conference attendee, told Mashable that it was around 1:00 or 2:00 am on Saturday morning when a number of slot machines went all down simultaneously. He went on to say that “ALL” slots appeared to be offline or were showing an error message. Mr. Anderosn talked to a pit boss, who was not able to provide him with information about what was going on and who was “kind of panicking.”
The DEF CON attendee’s recollections were very similar to a number of reports by people who took to social media to share information about the unusual occurrence at the gaming floor.
The Casino’s Response
A spokesperson of The LINQ, a hotel and casino resort owned and operated by Las Vegas gaming and hospitality giant Caesars Entertainment Corp., told Mashable that the incident was indeed atypical but denied any possibility for it to have been the result from a hacking attack.
He further explained that they were investigating the incident and that while they were still unaware of the reason, he said they believe the outage happening during a major hacker convention was “purely coincidental”.
Asked how many machines went down Saturday, The LINQ spokesperson was unable to provide an exact number, but judging by social media posts and a video Mr. Anderson sent to Mashable, it seems that quite some machines were showing error messages or were completely offline.
The casino’s spokesperson said that so far there was no evidence that the incident was the result from a hacking attack or was cybersecurity related.
There have been multiple stories about tech-savvy bandits targeting slot machines at casinos around the world in pursuit of profit. Casino News Daily reported earlier this year police in Bulgaria had arrested four individual after they were uncovered to have hacked gaming machines at casinos and gaming halls across the Southeastern European country, reportedly defrauding them of massive amounts of money.
The group of criminals had been able to meddle with the slot machines after obtaining remote access to those and to manipulate the outcome of games to gain profit in the process. Aside from the four arrested individuals, Bulgarian police had seized a large unspecified amount of money and equipment used by the hackers.
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