Hacker tells me how he hacks PS

First of all, I'm the furthest thing from the 'techy computer' type... so I don't really know or remember how he does it.

Basically I went to a live cash game held at a nearby seniors centre, and I met this older gentleman who works for a software company (of which they are trying to sell patents to Nortel). Anyways, halfway through the session, he overhears me talking about PokerStars and he pipes up about him and his co-workers are working on software that can hack the website.

A few interesting points:
1) He worked for the military at one point or another
2) He says he's trying to hack the software to help understand and prevent hacking in the future
3) This is a not for gambling profit project
4) He at one point pulls out his blackberry and it all of the information of a tournament that had just been played by one of his bots. It had all of the essential information you'd expect from a PS SNG congratulatory e-mail. The e-mail had the time on it and it said 2:47am on it, and he had been in that room playing live for the last 8 hours.
5) The bot only plays cheap microstakes games
6) They are working on bots that can see opponents cards but are having difficulty with face cards
7) Notable bots: Mr. T & Triple H (I'm not sure of correct spelling or look of either name)
8) This guy is legit

At the beginning of the conversation, it was very worry some. At the end, it was kind of reassuring. Only because he seemed very honest about this being an act of protection for the players.

LoL, this is bullshit on so many levels.

i'm more worried about my account being hacked than this. Cool

If possible, why not email PokerStars and ask for further investigations?

you make a great point....

Don't take it too personally Fnord. I'm just passing on information I received.

think about how can they worry about recognising face cards. They either have data or they don't, and they can't be remotely viewing everyones pc with a fuzzy display. It makes no sense.

I'm a software nerd for a living, and the 'having trouble with face cards' makes absolutely no sense.

The 'hack' would have to have a way to retrieve data about other player's hands from the server (unlikely to begin with), and if it could do that, it could do that for any card -- It's not like face cards are special in any other way than how they're physically printed, but in electronic form, the cards would be most likely represented as numbers, 10 = T, 11 = J , ...

I'd love to have a more detailed technical conversation with the ol' dude.

How was the night drew? Games soft enough to be worthwhile? I may join you some other week if you liked it enough to go back.

Softer than any casino you've every been to. 100max left with 600.

PISS!

.5/1 games, eh?

I'm comin' next time you're goin' Smile

It wouldn't be every computer obv. wouldn't it be trivial to have your worm search their puter for Stars, then report back? Then you would go track the person down and sit at their table and super user them.

Was just my thought, cuz like you said: having a hard time with face cards, doesn't really make sense.

mebbe hes tryin to back door the screen grab for the security part of the software that tries to detect bot action or processes. however ud expect this stuff to be locked down tighter than a pilgrims pocket. even so the "picture card" line sounds like rubbish its either data or its not theres no half way.

Another geek's opinion...full of shit. Like everyone else, I think it's the "hard time with face cards" line that really makes the story fail.

But don't feel bad. All bots are bad at detecting lies.

lol bring on the bots to high stakes cash games.

I'm sure PokerStars pays many top notch security companies big bucks to try and hack in all the time. Can you imagine how many millions of dollars they would lose if their site was hackable and it leaked out? They take preventative measures like they should and protect their assets.

<------------- Senior Electrical Engineering student

As with most any large online system, my first thought is how could it be exploited. Not for my own personal gain, it's just an interesting hypothetical. So yeah....I've thought about it before.

Conclusion: It's not possible to hack PS so that you can see other people's cards. To put it in the easiest terms possible: Your computer doesn't know the other players cards until showdown.

It's not a matter of security where the cards are covered by a layer of encryption until showdown and then finally uncovered. They're literally not there. Each table has a server space and the players actions are stored in one database table while the cards are stored in another. Then upon showdown the cards are retrieved by a database retrieval command which is then sent to your computer. The only ways your cards are in jeopardy is if a fake retrieval command was made (utterly useless because it would only be allowed at showdown) or if the entire PS network as a whole is cracked. In which case i might rather extract about $100 million than you card faces. So rest easy, rounders.

I dunno. I thought someone might be interested as to why this is impossible. And i was excited to finally have a useful thing to say on this forum.

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Hacker tells me how he hacks PS