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A teenage boy may have been responsible for a ransomware attack that occurred in Las Vegas last year. Police in England confirmed on Thursday they had arrested an unidentified 17-year-old boy from the town of Walsall for allegedly shutting down a resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip last year.
The boy was arrested on suspicion of blackmail and violating Britain’s Computer Misuse Act and has been released on bail, a police statement said.
Police tracked down the teenage suspect as part of a joint investigation with the UK’s National Crime Agency and the FBI, and said they had recovered evidence from the teen’s address, including “a number of digital devices which will be subject to forensic examination.”
The statement also said the boy was part of a “global cyber online crime group,” but did not specify which group. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which allegedly took place on September 12, 2023, and involved just a 10-minute phone call to a helpdesk employee using information obtained from LinkedIn. The group has also claimed responsibility for a similar ransomware attack against a beauty brand. .
“All the ALPHV ransomware group did to compromise MGM Resorts was go to LinkedIn, search for employees, and call the help desk,” the organization wrote in X’s post.
MGM Resorts’ outage continued, causing a major outage across its casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, and other casinos, including Caesars, were later targeted by a different group, before news emerged that they had paid hackers tens of millions of dollars to keep private company data from being leaked.