Absolute Soulreading/Rigged thread #3

[McSeafield]

Target --> Absolute Serverlocation in North York / Canada: 43.759N, 79.444W ?

[Dobedan]

I follow the thread from the beginning and with all sidestories and other funny stuff.

We all sure about it, that two things are proved: CHEATING and CHIPDUMPING !!!

But some questions are left.......the WHO and HOW ???

Imo its important to take a look at a small, but important piece:

- one of the guys, who played DD, told Adanthar, DD plays 15 minutes and sit out 10 minutes every time !!!
Would a super account only work for 15 minutes ?
Is a function useful to observe 1 table for 15 minutes and then you have to wait 10 minutes ( for a Pit Boss) ?

The style of cheating reflects to me, they didn´t know how long the cheating will work and tried to create large profit as soon as possible and they are poor at poker.

I think its useful to have a time frame we can put all FACTS in and try to fill the empty places with new information.

If you have such a "Powertool" and you will use it..... how many hours a day will you spent with Poker (remember....not sure about how long this tool will work)???

So we are missing a lot of HH´s !!!!

I saw DD was chatting with some guys after the cheating was public, was there more chat before ? May be some hidden information ?

If you are an AP Manager and in this situation:
a. you are involved in this situation and know everything about it
b. you are not involved but know some of the staff is
c. someone cracked your Pokerroom and you know how he did it
d. someone cracked your Pokerroom and you didn´t know how he is acting

Witch official Statement would you release ??? Correct: NONE !!!

So don´t wait for an official Statement.....we never get the truth from AP, we have to do our own investigations.

Try to say it like Tony G. --> AP, you are GONE, GONE, GONE.....WE SENT YOU BACK TO KAHNAWAKE, you didn´t deserve any applause

YOU WILL FEEL THE POWER OF 2+2

(Sorry for that English)

[McSeafield]

I am no victim in this case. But I want still to play on Absolute. And I want to find a fair solution because of a couple of other reason.

If Absolute is ignoring the right of the victims this will result in an ongoing dispute, a never ending story. And as I said yesterday. I fight for Online-Poker in Germany. I will not fight for Absolute if nothing happens. I will do exactly the oposit instead. Because only fair Online-Poker will have a little chance to survive.
This means that fraudulent or questionable poker rooms have to be sorted out so that the good remaining ones can battle for their existence.

If Absolute would ask a certified audit company to examine this case in order to find the correct answer for the whole poker community than Absolute has a chance and also the right to survive, whatever the outcome will be. Perhaps nothing will be found, perhaps only measures for improvment will be found, perhaps the cheaters will be discovered, perhaps it can be found, that somebody within Absolute has stolen money. Even in worst case scenario Absolute will get a chance, because of the fact that most of poker players like Absolute, no thought about that.

I repeat me. I want to see an external audit done by experienced auditors. This might be seen unusual but in this case this is the only chance for Absolute and the whole poker community to stop this dispute.

[runout_mick]

I've been following this from the beginning and haven't had anything useful to add, I just wanted to give props to Josem for his site.

I agree that it would have much more impact if we could get a preface from a Mr. Greenstein or Raymer, any big name that the masses will respect.

Also, thank you Adanthar for pulling out your banstick. The trolling was getting unbearable.

[TomC]

Hi guys,

I know this is going to look like a schill account or a fake account or just someone who no-one cares about but I'm just a long-time lurker. I am genuinely someone who cares about this. Granted I'm not a very good poker player but I do know quite a bit about SEO and online marketing etc.

If anyone hasn't heard of a site called http://digg.com then I suggest that you go visit and acquaint yourself with it. Getting on the homepage of a site like this can drive over 40,000 unique visitors within hours. While a lot of these people are no-body's there are influential people out there and by spreading the word we'll get more coverage for the story.

Now, I was going to recommend digging http://www.absolutepokercheats.com/ but if it's on cheap hosting the site will just collapse instantly (the digg effect is remarkably similar to a DDOS due to the sheer volume of visitors). Therefore I suggest that we digg the freakonimics post: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co...-not-to-cheat/ and within the comments provide a link to http://www.absolutepokercheats.com/

Now, if the traffic is significant then even comment traffic might take the site down (i'm really not sure how robust your hosting is).

To hit the homepage of digg we would need approximately 40 - 50 diggs within about a 12 hour period (it's not an exact science I'm afraid but somewhere in this region I suspect should do it, maybe a few more) and THE VAST MAJORITY OF THESE SHOULD COME FROM ESTABLISHED ACCOUNTS. So please, if you already have an account then great. If not then please don't go and create one and then digg this story as this will be counter-productive and will almost certainly result in the story being classed as spam.

I have dugg the story here:

http://digg.com/world_news/Major_Onl...aught_Cheating

Please, anyone with an active and genuine account please swing by and digg this story.

Thanks

PS - I'm based in the UK and will be out for most of the day but should be back around 6-7 GMT. Please PM me or message me on digg for the best chance of a reply.

[Josem]

the website i created is hosted by google. i doubt that their servers are likely to collapse under any reasonable circumstances.

[Fousekis]

Without wanting to sound like a [censored], I think people should stop making up scenarios of how the cheating was actually facilitated because all they are doing is hurting the credibility of this story.

The following are not facts as I have no way of confirming any of this, but they are all based on my experience in the IT field and my knowledge of how to build secure systems. The assumption here is that AP is being regulated and audited by someone that can tell their ass from their elbow.

"Superuser account", "Pit boss account", etc.

The existence of such a type of account is highly unlikely. It offers absolutely nothing more than a detailed log produced after the hand has been concluded and would be deemed a major security risk. Even if AP tried to have such an account, no regulatory/auditing authority would allow it.

Even in the unlikely situation were such an account existed for a reason we are failing to conceive, there is no reason for allowing access to it remotely as once more it would be considered a major security risk.

If such an account did exist, it would be a contradiction to the reason for its existence to limit it to just one table at a time.

Super user account that lets you play at the table

I hope you are joking. There is no way this can be justified to any regulatory/auditing authority. As a matter of fact, if I was doing the auditing and I spotted something like that, I'd have them fail the evaluation and recommend the business is shut down.

Cracking the client software

First of all the term "hacking" means to code, not to take advantage of vulnerabilities. The media have once more taken one thing and twisted it to mean another. Anyway, what you are actually referring to here is cracking.

First of all the communication between the client and the server is encrypted. So to begin with you'd need to crack the encryption or somehow acquire the decryption key. Cracking the encryption would require far longer than a few seconds, but it is possible (depending on the architecture of the software) to only need to crack it once and then be able to re-use the information you have acquired. It is also possible for the decryption key to have been made available to you in some way. Either way, we will assume that someone could potentially work around the encryption.

Now someone has access to the communication between the client and the server. He can intercept messages, alter them, send spoofed messages etc. Well, they have achieved nothing. The server software would have absolute no reason to send the hole cards of player A to player B in the middle of the hand without a showdown. No matter what you send the server through your cracked client, the code that sends you back the hole cards of other player would never execute unless it thought a showdown was taking place. If you tricked the server into thinking a showdown as taking place, it would not just conveniently send you the hole cards of the other players and then proceed with the hand as normal, it would bring the hand to showdown on everyone's client.

Gaining access to a central network router and intercepting traffic

You need to be physically present to perform this attack. You need to be plugged into the local network, you cannot perform this type of attack remotely. Let me make it 100% clear. You will need to be siting next to the router, with one computer playing at the tables and the other computer capturing the raw data as it flows through the router.

Why is this hurting the story?

Absolute Poker knows all this. Their security and IT departments are well aware of all the possible ways their system could be attacked (its part of your system design to produce these scenarios). Can you see why people sending them emails claiming that they have allowed their system to be compromised through a "superuser account" is hurting this story? They know a superuser account does not exist. They know that cracking their client software would achieve nothing. They know their physical security has not been compromised.

Right, so what you are saying basically is that no cheating could have taken place

Absolutely (heh) not, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that we should not try and speculate how the cheating happened, we should just be stating the facts. I do have a couple of theories as to how this could have been technically achieved without being detected by regulatory/auditing/code review checks (e.g. debugging code that made its way into the production system) but elaborating on them adds no value to the story.

[TomC]

Great, hopefully it won't fall over then :-)

[xTheKidx]

I've been thinking all the Time,why these guys (assuming it is more than 1 Person) made it so obv that they are cheating.
I dont think that it was an Inside Job because AP knew that it would Destroy their Image.
And would a Hacker behave that way,that he would play like a Maniac,Dump the Chips to at least 1 Player and the other crazy things?He would play maybe Looser and a little bit different than the rest of the Players.
So that leeds me to the Conclusion:
1.They were really that stupid (what a lot Posters think but doesnt make that much sense)

2.Or it was someone who wanted to be caught and wanted to Damage APs reputation.
That would make Sense why they played like a Maniac and did all these things.And maybe I has to do something with the Update of AP.
Maybe some Security Person who got Fired or something like that?
Would that be possible?

[Janis N.]

Fousekis, you make good points and it shows you have IT experience. I don't have a lot of security background, but I don't think you necessarily have to be near the router to do man-in-the middle attacks on the clients. You can hack the central server or the router remotely.

Also, just because you say having a superuser account or sending others' cards to the client would be totally stupid does not preclude Absolute from doing that.

Look at how they've handled this from a PR perspective and ask yourself why would they have the IT part in order?