13 ms·
Exposing high-end poker cheating devices
- blhack 10y agoHow do people find these "underground forums" and things like that? This fascinates me so much.
- asdf_jkl 10y agoThis is an impressive breakdown of an even more impressive device. Realtime(ish) cheating software running on custom concealed hardware in a lookalike device? Used for scamming high rollers in private games? Color me fascinated. I wonder how long this has been around. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who knows how long these have been available/prevalent. My apologies if this is somewhere in the video, I have not been able to watch it yet.
- paulsutter 10y agoTL/DR: phone-like device for reading specially marked cards using infrared
- yborg 10y agoIt actually works as a phone, too, though.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- scurvy 10y agoI wouldn't trust this device as a phone, especially not as a smartphone. You couldn't pay me to associate it with a trusted wifi network, put my SIM in there, or actually use an app.
- necessity 10y agoMight as well put it in a Faraday cage then as it could be sending your precise location to the FBI...
- harigov 10y agoWhy would you specifically mention "Chinese made" in the title? The actual article has a different title. Also, why does the fact that this device is made in China says anything about the device itself?
- colinplamondon 10y agoHalf of the entire article is about the difficulties of acquiring the (Chinese!) device, him trying to figure out if this is actually a real device (only made in China!), and eventually going direct to a factory (which is in China!). Read first, virtue signal second.
- sctb 10y agoIt's the author's right and responsibility to accurately advertise the article, not the submitter's. We've updated the title from “High end, Chinese made, poker cheating device”. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- harigov 10y agoAnd how does the title (now changed) help us understand that?
- lvs 10y agoHN should really avoid this old jingoist tendency in tech. Nearly all devices are made somewhere in Asia at this point, so this should not be noteworthy.
- daenz 10y agoIf I bought a device like this, with the clear amount of skill and effort that went into its functions, I would never plug it into a computer, ever.
- alsetmusic 10y agoGood point. I also wouldn't ever use it on the same network as any other private devices or use any of its services with private data (as noted, it is a fully functional phone - I would assume that it phones home regardless of my ability to detect it). Sure, the manufacturer would hurt their business by ripping off their clients, but we've already established loose ethics.
- dasil003 10y agoThe article says this device is used to cheat in Vegas, but I don't see how that would be possible since you have to bring your own cards. It's hard to imagine casinos colluding on this, so I guess they're talking about private games that happen to be in Vegas?
- grecy 10y agoI assume there are a lot of games being played in Vegas at far from reputable establishments, where the owners of such places would love to kick the odds in their favor. You know, the kind of place where your alcohol is mostly water (or floor cleaner) and clothing is optional for the wait staff.
- intrasight 10y agoAnd if they catch you cheating, you'll be find dead in a dumpster somewhere.
- klodolph 10y agoFinding the right mark has to be at least half of the work you'd expect to do anyway.
- blazespin 10y agoYeah, definitely this. The gambling scene is heavily involved with exceedingly shady characters and I can't imagine the vegas police particularly investigate too hard on deaths of people who are cheating others and undermining the economy that supports themselves and everyone they know.
- emmelaich 10y agoAlso dead if you catch them cheating.
- andrepd 10y agoYou watch too many movies.
- manav 10y agoThis is pretty silly. No casinos or card rooms let you have a phone/device at the table. That aside, you need to have a special marked deck. People have tried something similar with flourescent ink and special glasses. I think professional shuffling devices have some kind of built in blacklight check now for this. IR is a bit better since its harder to detect without a camera. You would still need to have a tub of ink and manually mark the cards though. You'd basically need to have the dealer in on it, and if that is the case you don't really need the device at all. A more interesting method from a few decades ago that actually worked was "edge sorting". Because of printing/cutting one could determine certain cards. http://deadspin.com/how-phil-ivey-beat-or-maybe-cheated-a-casino-for-mill-1562993963 http://deadspin.com/how-phil-ivey-beat-or-maybe-cheated-a-ca...
- empath75 10y agoIt works with a camera in a car key.
- albedoa 10y agoThis is pretty silly. No casinos or card rooms let you have a phone/device at the table. I've played all over the US, and while I'm sure there exists a room that bans phones at a cash table, I can't name one.
- manav 10y agoI'd say they are more lax now with using your phone, but I doubt they would let you set your phone ON the actual table next to the cards during a hand.
- albedoa 10y agoI'm talking strictly cash games here. (I know tournaments are different.) Most rooms allow your phone to be on the rail or in a cup holder, immediately next to your cards but not on the felt itself.
- jdietrich 10y ago> No casinos or card rooms let you have a phone/device at the table. That's simply not true. I'm not aware of a single cardroom that currently prohibits cellphones - indeed, several casinos have installed USB chargers in their gaming tables for customer use. Using an electronic device during a hand is prohibited, but this is primarily a matter of etiquette to speed up play. These devices pose no threat to the integrity of games at casino cardrooms. Their surveillance systems are more than capable of detecting an unusual IR emitter. Their dealers are more than capable of preventing deck switches and detecting suspicious card handling. These devices only pose a serious threat to games played in unlicensed venues. http://www.anteupmagazine.com/news/cell-phones-at-the-poker-table-are-here-to-stay.htm http://www.anteupmagazine.com/news/cell-phones-at-the-poker-... https://www.sitncharge.com/ https://www.sitncharge.com/
- Luc 10y agoThe technique with the markings on the edge of the card is also used in a well known card magic routine - but using wax instead of infrared ink, so you can feel the slight differences in texture when you handle the card (though only if you're paying attention to it). Takes quite a bit of practice, though.
- midgetjones 10y agoWhy is everyone treating this like it's real? Isn't this sort of overly-long, overly-detailed, yet still totally vague blog post just a clever way to get people to transfer $2000 via Western Union to a stranger?
- zardeh 10y agoThe video links to a defcon talk.
- midgetjones 10y agoThe perfect crime!
- throwaway1X2 10y agoIf it is a con, it is the longest long con you could ever invent. 1) Work hard, become a chief of anti-abuse team at Google. 2) Work harder, publish several papers ranging from self published papers about hacking Heartstone to multi-author papers at conferences like WWW. 3) Create a scam device, describe it in detail. 4) Go present it with you own face and name to the DEFCON. 5) Write a blogpost about the said non-existent device. Rake in the 2000 USD (which is reeeeally big fat reward for all your effort, risk and credibility) wired to a stranger in China who isn't even identified in the blog... You win a prize.
- throwaway1X2 10y agoPS: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Ayw4GsAAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Ayw4GsAAAAAJ
- a1a 10y agoTo be fair, if it was a con 1/2) Hijack identity of someone reputable 3) Create scam device 4) Film a video that looks like a DEFCON speech. Some simple video editing should fix the face. Voice likely doesn't matter. Start speech by saying "oh this talk is not listed, we changed topic last second" 5) Hack blog and post bogus article 6) Profit TLDR still not likely
- georgiecasey 10y agoi presume this would be about the online poker bots taking over the low level stake tables
- at-fates-hands 10y agoI think it would be easier to count cards then to rely on something like this. Sure, you're still working with odds, but then you don't have a device and marked cards which limits your exposure to having something horrible happen to you in some back room game.
- umanwizard 10y agoThe article talks about this in the context of poker, not blackjack.
- emodendroket 10y agoIt also says it can be used for multiple games though.
- pjc50 10y agoPreviously, decades ago, the state of the art in roulette cheating: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Newtonian-Casino-Penguin-Press-Science/dp/0140145931 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Newtonian-Casino-Penguin-Press-Scie...
- Steeeve 10y agoThat's interesting. I dealt roulette occasionally in my younger years ('90s) and we had 3 different sized balls to work with if we sensed someone getting a little too lucky. I don't know the inner workings of casinos in the modern day, but back then we had a lot of ways to deal with cheating. I'm sure there were pros that we never noticed, but the people who read how to count cards and decided to try it out were easy to spot and deal with. I remember one time the pit boss telling me over my shoulder "that's enough, bring it in" and I said "I'm trying!" because I actually was. I had dumped most of my tray of chips (not all that much on a $25 table) and it was very obvious we had 2 people at the table working on the rookie dealer. He pushed me out for my twenty minute break twenty minutes early and when I came back the tray was full and the players were surly. I commented "what happened to all your chips?" and the guy on third base stood up, pointed to the dealer that replaced me, and said "that bitch took it all". Cue security and the table cleared out just about instantly. A few of the things we could do to change things up on a blackjack table: - burn extra cards - change the shuffle - new deck of cards - prematurely end a hand - encourage non-standard play from the other players - encourage a player to walk away When I ran into the players I mentioned above, I only knew about burning extra cards. You pick up other ways from other dealers who've been around longer and want you to pull your weight by bringing in better tips. For roulette, there were just the two ways (changing the ball, stop and start the wheel), but it was pretty rare for me to deal that game, so who knows.
- forgettableuser 10y agoThis is from a British show called The Real Hustle. They show a modern way to cheat at roulette using a tiny computer and an earpiece to predict where the ball is going to land. The scammers then quickly place bets on all the immediate slots around the predicted slot (because it is imperfect). They admit, this is still pretty tricky to pull off. Starts at 3 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2FAZqScxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2FAZqScxM
- ctvo 10y agoI haven't been to a casino that allows a phone on the table in ages, especially in Asia. Not only that, but most decks are tightly controlled in reputable casinos. This is more for backroom games (which are still lucrative), but get caught cheating in those and you'll regret it quickly.
- mgraczyk 10y agoFrom the second video it looks like the device supports a key fob accessory which contains a second camera/LED system. This seems to communicate remotely with the phone, which could be placed in the user's pocket.
- Vexs 10y agoHe mentioned that there's a number of accessories available, which leads me to believe that there's a lot of various devices that the external camera can fit into. Perhaps even some way of alerting you to card movements through vibration or something.
- caf 10y agoThat's exactly what the haptic feedback accessories mentioned are.
- dopamean 10y agoI played 2/5 NLH at the Venetian in June of 2015 and had my phone on the table most of the time. I had earbuds in and would check twitter and text friends playing at other tables between hands. No one seemed to have a problem with it and I wasn't the only person doing something like that. I never thought it would be a problem actually.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe cash dropped from tourists is probably worth the annoyance.
- 10y ago
- daodedickinson 10y agoHmm with an incredible enough camera you theoretically ought to be able to see and then memorize idiosyncracies per card with any deck and then take it to Vegas at any table. I'd say its possible now, although too slow and expensive and obviously seeing the same card as the same card from every side is the hardest part. The camera and light would probably be a fair amount larger, too.
- manarth 10y agoWith an unmarked deck, I don't believe the technology currently exists. I would accept that at a given magnification, every card is unique (including when viewed from the side), and can be uniquely identified. But without a marked deck, it would need one (probably more than one) run through the deck, to see the value of a card and associate it with an image of the side of the card. Bear in mind you only get to record cards that are shown, so it could potentially take many games to record the full deck, and that's assuming the deck stays consistent. But even with multiple run-throughs of the deck, I don't think we have the technology to produce that high resolution a camera in a small enough form-factor. Even putting aside expense, the trick here is pre-marked decks, with markings visible only to IR. Without that, we'd need serious advancements in lenses and sensors before we could have a tool that was discreet enough to pull out at a game.
- Tuna-Fish 10y ago> Bear in mind you only get to record cards that are shown, so it could potentially take many games to record the full deck, and that's assuming the deck stays consistent. Depending on what game you are playing, you don't need to mark anywhere near the full deck. In hold'em, you can get a definite edge if you manage to mark two aces. The primary problem is optics. All optical devices are limited by the quantization of light. No matter how good your camera technology, if there are not enough photons bouncing off a target, you cannot see it accurately. Modern cameras (and even your eyes!) are much closer to the hard limits placed by physics than most people think. In the case of a side of a card in not very well lit indoors, I don't think you can discern enough detail without either a large lens or a long exposure, both of which could be hard to pull off inside a casino. Even painted on markings, they need a bright IR light to pull this off at a close distance. Similarly, your camera would need a bright light source.
- Magnets 10y agoWhat's the range on that camera? I can't imagine it's more than 20-30 cm
- daodedickinson 10y agoI'd wager the engineers behind this have thought a lot about voting machines, except I'd bet they'd find a way to cheat me out of both of these gambles.
- breitling 10y agoYou could never take this into a real casino. The cameras would pickup the infrared signals. The security guys would know something is up since a regular phone doesn't do that.
- nom 10y agoGood point, but it works with marked cards so you essentially have to have control over the deck anyways. It can't work in an official game by a player, the house has to be in on it. My guess: this device is used to rip off players in backroom games. Marked cards are nothing new. The only novelty here is that the system is hard to detect if you don't know about it. This thing could be completely stealthy though, I suspect that you only have to turn on the infrared LEDs if the environment not lit well. And even that can probably be solved by using a more expensive camera module...
- exabrial 10y agoI can't believe the manufacturer agreed to send them the device! Pretty amazing technology.
- mysterypie 10y ago> I can't believe the manufacturer agreed to send them the device! The way I understood the article, the manufacturer assumed the guy was a normal "legitimate" customer. They did not expect the guy to do a teardown of the device and write an exposé.
- fencepost 10y agoThis seems like it'd be mostly used in private games, of which I'm sure there are a huge number. Many of those are probably also going to be pretty high stakes, and if someone loses a bunch they may not be inclined to go to authorities and claim cheating - if said authorities would do anything anyways. ("Awww, you lost your money in an off the books backroom private game? Perhaps next time you'd like to try one of our fine professionally run casinos."). I suspect that most casinos are set up with surveillance designed to catch point source IR LED illumination these days.
- emodendroket 10y agoWell, if the movies are to be believed, while that may be true, you're liable to get your ass kicked.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Vexs 10y agoI heard something some time ago about casinos marking their cards with rfid chips to avoid cheating. I wonder if you could make something to read those RFID chips.
- scurvy 10y agoThey just tag the boxed decks so they can verify chain of custody and control.
- soheil 10y agoBefore reading this entire post (fairly long) a quick note, this only works with specially marked decks not just any deck of cards.
- Animats 10y agoThe casino industry knew all about this in 2014.[1] "Right now there is some scary technology coming out of China that incorporates IR marked cards, concealed cameras and computer analyzers. Combined to create a high-tech card marking system, I must say that this device could do for cheats what silicon did for the cosmetic surgery business. The devices are being marketed as poker analyzers." "The technology works like this. The long edge of every card in the deck is marked with an invisible IR marking. Each mark identifies an individual card. In collusion with a poker dealer, the special marked deck is swapped into play. The player sits opposite the dealer on the table. He positions a concealed camera on the table (usually disguised as a cell phone). The camera has an IR lens that is used to transmit an image of the edge of the deck of cards to a small computer located in a smart phone (the poker analyzer) in his pocket. The image is transmitted during the period after the dealer has shuffled the cards and the deck is resting in front of the dealer before cards are dealt to the players. The IR snapshot of the cards looks like a barcode. The poker analyzer identifies every card in the order that they will be dealt to the players in less than a second. A computer-generated voice message is sent to the player via a Bluetooth mini earpiece communicating the rankings of all the hands on the table." And the countermeasures: "Most surveillance cameras, in their natural state, actually have infrared viewing capabilities. The problem is the picture is not so good, so manufacturers add a cut filter over the CCD chip to block out infrared light. ... A number of major surveillance camera systems provide end users the ability to remotely change the IR status of the camera via the operator’s keyboard. This allows the operator who suspects someone is marking cards at a table to use a PTZ camera assigned to the table to switch to IR mode so the cards can be checked live on the game. If you currently don’t have this feature, speak to your manufacturer." [1] http://ggbmagazine.com/issue/vol-13-no-2-february-2014/article/surveillance-report-on-your-mark http://ggbmagazine.com/issue/vol-13-no-2-february-2014/artic...
- CamperBob2 10y agoI guess my thinking is that if you own the dealer and the deck of cards, the game is already over. There are bound to be easier ways to cheat under those circumstances than adding a Rube Goldberg contraption into the mix.
- 10y ago
- drited 10y agoAn interesting bit of computer history trivia is that Claude Shannon co-invented the first wearable computer with Ed Thorp to beat roulette in Vegas in 1961. It used a button in the shoe as an input device for the user to record the speed and location of the ball which was used to infer the likely ending location using orbital decay algorithms. An auditory signal was then sent by wire to an earpiece to let the user know where to place bets (it wasn't pinpoint accurate - the user would bet on 8 numbers which still gave him a positive expected value). The story around that is really fun, recounted in this paper: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/thorp.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/thorp.pdf Versions of the same device from this century use lasers to get a more accurate read on the ball's location, with one group using the system to net £1m from London's Casinos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4069629.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4069629.stm Thorp was also involved in developing the Blackjack system that was showcased in the film 21 and later ran a hedge fund, details on which were recounted in his interview for this book https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Fund-Market-Wizards-Winning/dp/1118273044 https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Fund-Market-Wizards-Winning/dp/.... Very interesting guy.
- oskarth 10y agoEd Thorp is a very interesting guy indeed. His Memoirs are coming out in the beginning of next year but there's a foreword written by Nassim Taleb that gives a good taste of Thorp: https://medium.com/@nntaleb/foreword-to-ed-thorps-memoirs-a-man-for-all-markets-6beba78cd2b#.pty00tqyo https://medium.com/@nntaleb/foreword-to-ed-thorps-memoirs-a-...
- technofiend 10y agoThis sounds similar to efforts that came later as documented in The Eudaemonic Pie: https://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas-Bass/dp/0595142362 https://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas-Bass/dp/0595142... Although as I recall the EP version used a shoe with toe switches for input and buzzers for haptic feedback, it also used a 6502 so it must have been a later effort either invented in parallel or reinventing Mr. Shannon's work.
- netman21 10y agoWhy not just OCR the faces of any deck with a side reading camera like the ones used for archival purposes to digitize really old books?
- majortennis 10y agoTL;DR tampered deck.