Stolen Cowboys Casino info surfaces online one year after cyberattack
'Our worst fear is it would become public. And it has,' says general manager
A year after a cyberattack at Cowboy's Casino in Calgary breached the personal information of staff and customers, some of that stolen information showed up online.
In June 2016, information of 14,294 patrons and staff was hacked. The Calgary casino alerted Alberta's privacy commissioner and reached out to all affected customers, but on Sunday, the information resurfaced on the data-sharing website Pastebin.
"Unfortunately, once that information was taken last year, although we've taken every step we can to keep it out of the public realm, there's no guarantee it's ever going to be deleted," said general manager Tyrone Waite.
"Our worst fear is it would become public. And it has."
The leaked information was accompanied by a note, warning the data dump was just the first and more would follow. The leaked information includes customer's personal information and information on gambling habits and payouts.
"The computer security at cowboys casino was non-existent and all data was ripe for the taking," read a note on the site. "We asked cowboys casino to fix the [gaping] holes in their system but our request was ignored for over a year."
The online note said the information was released to urge the casino to "take customer and employee privacy more seriously."
No further incidents
Waite said since the breach last year, Cowboys has had no further incidents and they have taken every step to ensure it doesn't happen again.
"We're constantly upgrading, we're upgrading every month and we've gone through training with our staff. Unfortunately you're just getting bigger and bigger screen doors," he said.
Cowboys is reaching out to affected customers once again to remind them their information is not secure.
Waite said they have been in contact with police over the matter.
"It's not just Cowboys Casino that's had the issue, it's a pretty widespread problem — not just in our industry, but in a lot of industries," he said.
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