zonealarm=party quarantined

[jukofyork]

I have just posted a reply to the other forum where this was being discussed (see here). But since making this post I have investigated more into the legal situation, and it appears that Party will be quite hard pushed to force users to disable things like process guard, as in some countries simply not protecting your PC against potential threats, opens the PC's owner liable for any misuse, and this would be equivalent to asking them to disable your firewall.

Also, if this thread is to be believed then I think we should all be much more cautious of exactly who and what information Party has access too! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Terry]

I dunno. They're not forcing anyone to do anything, people always have the option to not play if they don't like the terms.

If the choices are to give minimum wage employees in India total access to my computer or to give the multiaccount cheats free reign on the poker sites ... I hope somebody can come up with a better option.

And no, setting up a computer only for poker is not a better option. If that seems necessary, it means online poker is pretty much finished.

Anyway, has anybody logged on with ProcessGuard or SnoopFree running?

[Hoopster81]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, has anybody logged on with ProcessGuard or SnoopFree running?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, although it has never made any mention about lhl.dll or whatever it is...

[Stosh]

I Dl'd Snoop Free today. As expected, Party tried to hook my keyboard immediately once I signed on. I denied access and was still able to play as usual. It wasn't until I tried the player search feature that they tried to get a screenshot. Once again, I denied access. Party continued to function just fine for the rest of the night. So far, so good. 'Stosh

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Just been reading the ProccessGuard forums and saw a link to this utility called SnoopFree. Looks like this can do quite alot of what PG can do (and has some extra features too) and is also freeware.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Looks interesting. Perhaps someone can start threads named ProccessGuard and snoopfree so it will have more visibility.

Regarding Zone Alarm, that may be one of those applications were some of the older versions are better (for MusicMatch Jukebox this is a definite). Check out the CNET download reviews.

I just checked Oldversion and it includes some of the older versions of ZoneAlarm recommended by some of the CNET reviewers.

~ Rick

[jukofyork]

Yes, the use of the llh.dll is not mentioned by either application, but it was the fact that it appeared that hinted to me that it could be part of some malware or a Trojan. Rather than keeping to try to cross post with the other forum where this is also being discussed (see here for full discussion), I will just copy what I wrote here:

[ QUOTE ]
"Yes, I also saw a copy of llh.dll appear, thought it could be related to some kind of malware or Trojan and decided to disassemble it and take a look.

Looking at the disassembly I noticed that it imported three functions necessary for hooking windows messages/API calls (see: http://www.codeproject.com/system/hooksys.asp). This always should ring alarm bells, as this is exactly what is needed to make a global key-logger capable of stealing passwords etc.

I then (surprisingly) traced the dll back to the PartyPoker folder and realized after installing something called AntiHook that it was indeed PartyPoker which was installing this.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

PS: It should be noted though that there are many useful/innocent uses of hooking and they are not always from malware and for example; both Amir's Blinder utility (see: http://www.playerview.net/) and my application which converts $'s to BBs (see http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showth...=0#Post4150941) rely on hooking API calls inside of the Party client itself. Also Yahoo IM and MSN messenger both install hooks for them to work correctly, so don't instantly assume if it hooks something, then it is malware!"

[/ QUOTE ]

I too can confirm that I havn't had any problems from using either ProcessGuard or SnoopFree yet (but the first application I used called AntiHook was VERY unstable).

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Terry]

Ok, so it looks like we can stop Party from snooping our private information. Now how to fix it so they can stop the cheats?

Quoted from Policy on Unfair Advantage Programs, second paragraph from the bottom of the page:

"We do not scan your hard drive or take screen shots from your machine."

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, so it looks like we can stop Party from snooping our private information. Now how to fix it so they can stop the cheats?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 100%, and think there are many ways they could be tackling this problem without the need for all this 'snooping'.

If one were to try to cheat at online chess or online backgammon, then there are well known methods which will show up people who try to cheat WITHOUT any need for 'snooping' at all (in fact the methods are robust enough to be hard to deceive even if the cheat detection algorithms used are made public).

I agree in poker it is harder to detect cheating bc of the nature of the game, but I think perhaps it's time Party Gaming decided to invest some of their X Billion profits in some decent server side cheat detection and less on these kind of legally 'grey' methods they are using atm.

Also, after the recent ZJ incident, I wonder just exactly what on earth they doing <u>server side</u> to try to stop cheating, as I would have thought some very simple methods (which most certainly are employed by chess servers such as ICS and FICS) could have easily flagged/detected this.

[ QUOTE ]
"We do not scan your hard drive or take screen shots from your machine."

[/ QUOTE ]
Well even if you decide not to block them, I suggest everybody install the SnoopFree utility I found the link to. It is freeware and clearly shows this statement to be false.

Just my 2cents, but I do believe that party should be at least trying to protect us better than they are currently, as what I have found pretty much shows that their current methods will only catch naive cheats, leaving more intelligent cheats to do as they wish.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Terry]

It does seem somewhat incredible that affiliates have had to teach people how to hack their registry entries so they can open a new account on a clean computer, and friends who have signed up on a buddy's computer are detected and prevented from playing at the same table, yet the cheats have been able to run multiple accounts on the same computer at the same time without being stopped.

My guess is that the security measures have been aimed mainly at protecting the site from credit card fraud, with little effort actually going toward protecting the games. Let's hope they've learned a lesson.

Just for the record, I installed SnoopFree today and played for about an hour. I did immediately have to deny Party the keyboard hook but it never popped up wanting to read my screen. Looking back in the thread, I see that that may not happen until I use the search feature.

Edit:
I just loggon on and did a couple searches for players ... did not get the screen hook pop-up, so it must be related to something else.

[Slider2]

SnoopFree detects programs attempting three functions (each trigger an "allow/deny" option, as per a firewall):

1) Inserting a keyboard trap
2) Doing a screen capture
3) Accessing an application not owned by themselves (ie. not owned by Party).

Since installing SnoopFree a couple of days ago (as a result of reading this thread) only #1 has occurred to me, as soon as Party was next started. I denied.

Only effect that I could see was that when I typed in chat, and pressed enter, it simply disappears. My chat apparently does not get sent to PP-Host, as it does not appear in the chat window nor in the hand logs after the hand. Why a keyboard hook is needed for chat is not obvious to me (somewhat technically challenged). Typing the chat works fine, just not sending it to PP-Host.

If you don't want to chat, I see no reason not to use SnoopFree.