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Posted by: CasinoNow at February 9, 2002, 12:06 am

Topic: Cryptologic profit drops due to hacker Forum: Winner Online

The article says that the person hacked in and reprogrammed slots and craps games to payout higher. That is not the same as saying that the games themselves are typically programmable. It is more likely that this person just substituted algorithms.

I am curious as to if anyone knows for sure: Is this actually a second hack into Cryptologic, or is this just a continuence of the story we heard a few months ago? I am also curious as to why they are going through their insurance to reclaim funds. One would think that, given that these are serious felonies in most "modern" countries, it would be more logical to reverse transactions through the banking networks, along with both criminal and civil prosecution. I mean, given the data around the case, they have to know who it was and where they sent the money.

By the way, this problem is not specific to cryptologic. I have seen a couple of other products out there that are "hackable", and even had one demonstration as to how easy it was to get into one group's database structure from the User Interface. I'm not comfortable releasing the company name though, as they have since upgraded and may have patched the hole, and if they didn't, I don't want to be the cause of a bunch of amateur hackers trying to get into databases.

Also, I would note that it's not uncommon for some games, mainly slots, to be programmable. For example, on slots you may want to have the ability to change payouts from month to month to help compensate for bonuses or to drive traffic to games that not many people are playing, or even as the standard launch of a new game. In these situations, there are usually specific increments (80% to 98% payback rate) that the operator can choose, so they are limited and still within most gambling guidelines. Another example would be a game like craps, where you might usually have a 5x Odds table for standard play, but want to raise it to be a 20x odds table for some specific promotion. Again, this is perfectly acceptable, at least in my opinion.

Jerry Garner
GamingBroadcast.com
jerry@gamingbroadcast.com

Quote: Originally Posted by Gamerz:
Aha, so the software is programmable and not random! That, in itself raises my eyebrows. I don't buy the same song and dance that all the casinos try and sell, that their software is completely random and not programmable. I think many of us have been lied to.

[This message has been edited by Gamerz (edited 02-05-2002).]

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