Two Las Vegas casinos hit by computer outage

Two Las Vegas casinos' slot machines were out of action for almost a week and appear to be recovering from a mysterious computer outage that left casino floors and slot machine chairs empty.

Investigations are currently underway by the Nevada State Game Control Board, which told Computer Business Review it is “actively monitoring the situation”.

The problems first appeared on social media and on popular Twitter accounts such as Las Vegas Locally and Vital Vegas last week. Posts and videos showed many slot machines indicating a malfunction and digital signs indicated the machines were 'out of service.'

The machines at Binion's Casino and Four Queens Hotel and Casino appeared to be malfunctioning as of Saturday afternoon. Both casinos are owned by the company TLC Casino Enterprises, Inc. By Monday, KTNV confirmed the slot machines at the properties appeared to be functioning again, although scattered outages were apparent at the Four Queens.

The two casinos’ websites also remained down on Tuesday, after the incident, first reported six days earlier, on February 27. Slot machines, player loyalty programs, credit card processing, hotel reservations, and ATMs were all affected.

At the Four Queens Casino, signs stating “Computer systems are down. Cash only” were posted at the parking garage and the slot machines were posted with messages like “out of order” and OUT OF SERVICE” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The Nevada State Game Control Board has issued a brief statement: “The board is aware of the incident and we are actively monitoring the situation. As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further comment.”

"When it comes to cybersecurity, it's not if, it's a when and how bad," said Garvin Bushell, president of The Learning Center Las Vegas. "No matter what you do, the hackers just have to be right one time and as an IT professional, I have to be right every single day and all those attacks are happening on a daily basis," said Bushell.

Bushell says in his experience the length out the outage indicates this was not a simple problem. "Ransomware is out there and for them to be down from Wednesday to [Monday] it kind of raises from flags," said Bushell.

In January, the City of Las Vegas announced it fell victim to a "cyber compromise" and revealed they experience breach attempts 279,000 times per month on average. Authorities with the City of Las Vegas said they do not believe any data was lost in the January compromise.

MGM Resorts is currently facing court action over a security breach during the summer that exposed the personal details of a reported 10.6 million guests, while casino vendor Golden Entertainment has also admitted falling victim to a phishing campaign.