As the old saying has it...
... if you sit down at a poker table and you can't tell who is the sucker, it's you!
Screenshot malware targeted innocent online poker players
Spyware is targeting users of the Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars online games – and it is said to allow cheats to get a sneaky advantage over honest players. The malware, named Odlanor, first checks if PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker is running before taking screenshots of the infected player’s virtual poker hand and their …
-
Friday 18th September 2015 12:52 GMT Killing Time
Can't say it comes as a surprise...
As much as I enjoy the game I have always been wary of online.
As it is essentially a game heavily reliant on multiple sources of information relating to your opponents, online play cuts this information stream down,increases the variables and therefore the luck element.
This creates a market for the support programs mentioned to compensate, resulting in an attack vector external to the game to really gain an edge....
-
Saturday 19th September 2015 11:30 GMT Sysadmin_Nath
Re: Can't say it comes as a surprise...
You are saying having less information (physical tell) on your opponent actually increases the luck(probability) element. Probability is constant, there are always 52 cards in the deck, the odds of hitting your card will never change.
I would argue you actually have more information at your fingertips playing online. Hand tracking programs will allow me to save and analyse 000,000's of hands on my opponent, my stupid human brain would never remember all of that playing live. With all of this data I can find interesting patterns in your betting that I would never get live.
-
Saturday 19th September 2015 17:13 GMT Killing Time
Re: Can't say it comes as a surprise...
OK, I can see why you see it like that, I actually meant the proportion of the decision attributed to luck would be more given less supporting information, however these decisions are very soft there are no hard and fast rules.
I don't doubt the online tools appear useful, they would need to if the goal of the developer is to introduce a trojan as per the article subject.
Regarding hand tracking programs though, I genuinely don't see the advantage. I personally don't play the same two hole cards the same way with any consistency. Not to labour the point but it depends on the information. In a live gave that is all received in the first person, there is no intermediary and least risk of modification.
-
-
-
Friday 18th September 2015 13:13 GMT RobHib
Disconcerting news about NirSoft's WebBrowserPassView
NirSoft's utilities are very useful, I use them regularly. It's disconcerting to see WebBrowserPassView used in this way.
As it is, many antivirus programs already over-target these utilities, thus often overly frightened users do not use them for this reason. The most targeted utility of these antivirus programs is the combiner/launcher NirLauncher.
It seems to me that antivirus software writers could be more responsible by explaining the issues of this type of utility rather than deliberately nuking them. For example, upon detection, AV software could, say, offer the user a sandbox-like function until he/she wishes to use them–and only free them upon a specific requests/input from the user.
Incidentally, I have an obvious way to stop AV software nuking or attempting to nuke perfectly good utilities that may have escaped some of you. I encrypt my utilities directory from the context menu using Axantum Software's AxCrypt but any equivalent would do. By keeping susceptible utilities encrypted AV software just passes over them. When I need to use them, I simply disengage the AV software's real-time/resident mode.
-
Saturday 19th September 2015 13:12 GMT x 7
rare? You must be kidding. This kind of poker spyware has been around for years, I've lost count of the number of PCs belonging to poker players that I've had to sanitise. Keyloggers, remote viewing apps, backdoors......the list is endless
The problem is, the kind of people who play online poker (or gamble) online are all clueless idiots with no tech knowledge, do everything at a rush, and click on anything and everything they see without consideration.
However despite that, its my firm belief that many of the online poker applications are - or at least were in the past - actually trojaned at point of manufacture to enable the game organisers to ensure an advantage. I'm convinced the games are rigged at point of installation
