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For the first time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the Iranian government was behind a damaging cyberattack on the Sands Las Vegas Corporation (LVS) in 2014. He mentioned it while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.

Sands owns several well-known properties, including The Venetian and Palazzo in Las Vegas and two other resorts in Macao and Singapore.

The attack made headlines, because Las Vegas Sands is a large publicly-traded company. In February 2014, it said unidentified hackers broke into its computer network and stole customer data: credit card data, Social Security numbers and driver's licenses numbers.

At the time, it sounded like just another digital break-in. But the nation's leading intelligence official says it was much worse than that.

On Thursday, Clapper described it as a "destructive cyberattack" on par with North Korea's hack of Sony. In that case, hackers wiped computers, destroyed data and froze the company to a halt.

It's unknown what damage Iranian hackers did to the casino company. Las Vegas Sands declined to comment for this story.

However, the company thinks hackers broke into its casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and "certain company data may have been destroyed," according to documents it filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Of all targets, why Adelson's company? The businessman is a major donor to Republican politicians. He's staunchly pro-Israel, the ultimate foe of the current Iranian regime. And in the past, Adelson has casually suggested that the U.S. drop nuclear bombs on Iran.

If Clapper's assertion is true, this is the latest example of a frightening trend: governments are hacking private companies.

Chinese hacker spies have stolen business plans from U.S. power plants. Russian hackers have broken into American and European oil and gas companies. And most recently, leaked documents show American and British spies hacked a phone SIM card maker in the Netherlands.

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Iran hacked an American casino, U.S. says