Rama Resorts hack troubles deepen with threat of a class action

Within a day of Ontario’s Rama Resort warning clients and vendors that it had been hacked and private information stolen (see previous report), the anonymous hacker started posting some of the data on the internet, boasting that more would follow within the next three days.

The published data appeared genuine and included staff performance reviews, banking communications and even details of the attempted recovery of Cdn$ 100,000 owed to the casino by an Ontario punter, according to several local media reports.

The data was accompanied by a comment from the hacker claiming that security systems were lacking at the First Nation-owned casino and that the hack and theft of data had not been difficult to execute.

Interestingly, there was no mention of any attempt to extort money from the operator, and the casino has not mentioned any attempts at holding it to ransom.

Rama Resorts’ trials and tribulations appear to be just getting started, however; on Friday legal firms in Toronto began urging individuals and companies impacted by the theft of their personal and private information from the casino to join a Superior Court Cdn$50 million class action against its owners, claiming damages.

The communication from one of the firms advised that the case would be initially filed on Monday, and claimed:

“The class action will be commenced on behalf of employees, customers and vendors of the Casino Rama Resort whose confidential information was compromised by the privacy breach. The proposed representative plaintiffs in the lawsuit are customers who gave the resort their confidential information, including financial information.”

One of the lawyers involved in the action, Ted Charney, said the incident at Rama represented a “massive privacy breach”.

He said that the full story has yet to unfold, but that it appeared that the owners of Rama had “rolled the dice with employee, customer and vendor data, rather than invest in state-of-the-art security measures.”

Rama spokesperson Jenna Hunter responded:

“We continue to work with the proper authorities on the ongoing investigation and are limited in how much detail we can provide. We deeply regret the this situation and recognize the seriousness of the issue.”

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