Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

Hello ,

I would like to bring to your attention some facts with regards to pokerstars and i would like to hear from you all what do you think about the following:


1. Greg raymer account was broken into several months ago,
the details of this break in were not addressed by pokerstars. they did not say a word about what had happened in a technical manner. I would expect a multy million $ company to find out when a person is trying 10,000 times to enter the wrong password. the fact that this happened without anyone noticing raising some serious doubts about the security level of pokerstars. could it be that some pokerstars worker gave him the password ?
could it be that the break in was to pokerstars database and not a brute force attack on greg's password ?

2. nikstar - a wcoop event winner 2006 never played before or after on pokerstars. except for that tournament where he took 46K . I find it very hard to belive but thank god for
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/ you can check it for yourself.

If you look at top 5 finishers of some events you will find out that some of them ( which took some $$ ) has no history at all of playing at pokerstars. just like nikstar.

3. I dont think that pokerstars is rigged , i think that they do not know what is going on , i think that a scenario of a hacking group breaking into their networks and seating there is very possible. I dont see how a password can be guessed without anyone seing some ALERTS on monitor . ( and this is not just another password were talking world champ password ) .

I might be wrong , and i hope , i realy hope i am wrong.

PS - i have excluded my self from playing on that site long time ago.

thanks ,

Sheshbeshon.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

1) Raymer's password was easily guessable with basic knowledge about him.

2) Meh don't know anything about this, but it doesn't suggest cheating to me.

3) Again I doubt it.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

[ QUOTE ]
could it be that the break in was to pokerstars database and not a brute force attack on greg's password ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Greg said in an NVG thread that his password could be easily guessed given his interests and was his own fault to some degree. So no brute force attack.

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2. nikstar - a wcoop event winner 2006 never played before or after on pokerstars. except for that tournament where he took 46K . I find it very hard to belive but thank god for
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/ you can check it for yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

link spam

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3. I dont think that pokerstars is rigged , i think that they do not know what is going on , i think that a scenario of a hacking group breaking into their networks and seating there is very possible.

[/ QUOTE ]


So stars doesn't rig it but someone else does right?



[ QUOTE ]
I might be wrong , and i hope , i realy hope i am wrong.

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You are but we're not going to hold your hand and tell you ten times a day that everything's OK.


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PS - i have excluded my self from playing on that site long time ago.

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So to top off your post you admit you are a gambling addict and thus more likely than most to attribute your losses to conspiracy theories instead of bad play.


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thanks ,


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No, thank YOU. We hardly ever get thoughtful posts like yours.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

your answer is funny to me :

1. gregg works for pokerstars. i dont expect him to say anything that might put pokerstars in truble.

2. about your claim that i am a gambling addict - even if it is true that does not change the facts i have mentioned.

PS - unlike many many other people i can afford being a gamlbing addict without the risk of losing my money !

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

Funny answe again -

easily gussable ?

It shows that you are clueless with regard to that...

lets say gregs password was 6 characters .

this means that it was 6 X 8bit/per char

this makes it 48 bits - which is 2^48 possibilities.
this is hard to guess...

even if you have the knowladge of something , this does not mean you will get the password on the first try.

most easy passwords are broken within 5000 tries. this is what we (people that know computers) consider as an very very very easy password.

dont you think the people in pokerstars should have seen Mr. world champ is trying to log in and cant do it for 100 times ?

if you think that the password was broken within 100 times
you are more ignorent then you think.

what ever greg said - pokerstars told him to say and approved it. he works for them.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

"2^48 possibilities"

what does that have to do with guessing? if someone says my password is 10 characters long and is the name of someone close to me, well that's easy to guess despite the length. you're thinking of time required for brute force attack, which previous posters here seem to think is not what happened.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

IT IS A BRUTE FORCE ATTACK EVEN IF HE NERROWED DOWN TO 1000 possibilites.

it is still brute force !

the guy did not know greg before that personally. so it had to take him a few 10's of guesses ? maybe a couple of hundrads ?

still - pokerstars should have known about it.

second - if it was that easy ? why pokestars did not comment on that incident ?

I have broken way way way to many passwords in my lifetime to know what is an "easy to guess" password looks like .

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

[ QUOTE ]
Funny answe again -

easily gussable ?

It shows that you are clueless with regard to that...

lets say gregs password was 6 characters .

this means that it was 6 X 8bit/per char

this makes it 48 bits - which is 2^48 possibilities.
this is hard to guess...

even if you have the knowladge of something , this does not mean you will get the password on the first try.

most easy passwords are broken within 5000 tries. this is what we (people that know computers) consider as an very very very easy password.

dont you think the people in pokerstars should have seen Mr. world champ is trying to log in and cant do it for 100 times ?

if you think that the password was broken within 100 times
you are more ignorent then you think.

[/ QUOTE ]

Raymer is quoted saying that he thinks it would take about 100 guesses.

It would be nice if their system was set to lock accounts after 5 incorrect passwords are entered. To implement that they would have to make login names different from screen names. Why they haven't done this, I don't know.

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what ever greg said - pokerstars told him to say and approved it. he works for them.

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1) He has a sponsorship deal with them, he is not an employee.

2) I highly doubt he had to run things by stars before acknowledging what happened.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

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still - pokerstars should have known about it.

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Who says they didn't?

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second - if it was that easy ? why pokestars did not comment on that incident ?

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Why do they need to comment? Raymer admitted that he choose his password poorly which allowed it to be guessed.

Re: Some serious doubts about pokerstars...
 

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It would be nice if their system was set to lock accounts after 5 incorrect passwords are entered.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stars might actually have a system in place to lock accounts (if it doesn't, I stand corrected - I just haven't tested it myself), but the person who hacked Greg's account might not have made every attempt in one session.

Typically, from my experience, if you screw up a password once or twice a day on website xyz, nothing happens. So, if this is the case with Stars, the hacker could have just spread the attempts over a few months.