Attackers exfiltrated a casino’s high-roller list through a connected fish tank

Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, revealed that is company investigated that hack of an unnamed casino that was breached via a thermometer in a lobby fish tank.

Internet of things devices are enlarging our attack surface, smart devices are increasingly targeted by hackers in the wild.

The case we are going to discuss demonstrate it, Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, revealed that is company investigated that hack of an unnamed casino that was breached via a thermometer in a lobby aquarium.

“There’s a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC [air conditioning] systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices. There’s just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface and most of this isn’t covered by traditional defenses.” Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told the WSJ CEO Council in London on Thursday.

“The attackers used that to get a foothold in the network. They then found the high-roller database and then pulled that back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud,”

The hackers stole the casino’s high-roller database through a thermometer in the lobby fish tank.

This isn’t the first a thermometer hack reported by experts at Darktrace, in July 2017 hackers attempted to exfiltrate data from a US casino by hacking into an Internet-connected fish tank.

A connected fish tank included sensors used to control the temperature, food distribution, and cleanliness of the tank.

“Somebody got into the fish tank and used it to move around into other areas (of the network) and sent out data,” said Justin Fier, Darktrace’s director of cyber intelligence.

At the time, hackers exfiltrated 10 GB of data that were sent out to a device in Finland.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – fish tank, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.