When Evil Meets Evil: The Las Vegas Cyberattacks

Alan Cai

September 15, 2023

MGM Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment, the two rival conglomerates forming a near-duopoly on the Las Vegas strip, were both hit in rapid succession in recent weeks by crippling cyber attacks. Attacks were likely perpetuated by separate illicit organizations and demanded millions in ransom for alleviation. According to an SEC filing, Caesar’s has paid its yet undisclosed ransom while MGM is still holding out and hoping to reboot its system.

The cyber attacks were reportedly both targeted at the weakest spots of both companies’ cybersecurity network: humans. Through accessing and leveraging IT workers’ information, the hacker organizations were able to penetrate the cybersecurity systems and dismantle much of the digital infrastructure.

Hotel check in processes, company websites, and ample quantities of user data were compromised by the MGM hackers. Cybercrime is among the fastest developing and most lucrative forms of illegal activities in the world today. Large corporations which have numerous weak spots are notoriously facile to breach and can yield fruitful ransoms especially for corporations which wholly rely on a constant flow of revenue to turn profit.

Cybercrime is a form of grand larceny at the highest level. It represents the pinnacle of criminal avarice and deathly drive to satiate its voracious appetite. Crime in itself is a terrible institution because it unleashes the unbounded and uncontrolled aspects of individual desires upon fellow human beings who must unfairly and unjustly suffer without consent.

Given that crime will always exist as long as humans continue to subsist, it is preferable to have the land the misgiving upon the most harmful facet of modern society: entertainment in general and gambling in specific.

The gambling industry is the worst major industry for America in almost all respects. It saps billions out of peoples’ pockets on a monthly basis; it wreaks havoc on the lives of many honest working people and entices them into spending lavishly on games they seldom win and earnings they will almost never retain. The issue of gambling is not limited to losing money however. They are designed to be addictive to the extent that the entire city of Las Vegas is a labyrinth of casinos and assorted slot machines which are easy to enter and difficult to exit.

Las Vegas casinos almost never have clocks in them and are almost entirely closed off to the daylight: a sly trick employed to keep gamblers trapped in the machines for hours on end oblivious to the time and other sustenance activities they must attend to. As a nation built upon the foundation of liberty, it is inconceivable how such a disdainful city lies one of America’s most important crossroads. Cyber attacks are a weapon of pure evil, suitable only for the lowliest of industries. The only solution to this plight is to simultaneously dismantle entertainment in America and make cybercrime a crime prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.