Cheat with a twist?

Not that I've ever had enough BR to be genuinely concerned, but my curious nature does tend to control me.

A question to the technically savvy IT member geeks.

We all know that large resources are invested by every major site in securing the data streams and keeping the game fair.

But what about the individual players vulnerability? Would it be possible for someone to scan for data patterns coming over servers in order to find players and exploit weakness in their individual security measures allowing them opportunity away from the robust security of the poker site?

Once a player is located, if you were able to monitor the data coming to him, it would make it far easier to enjoy the positive end of expected value.

Yes, my children also think that I waste cerebellar resources in a shameful and oh so irritating way. (Of course if you read my first few posts, you already knew that)

wat

noh hoo

Well I'm assuming their data is encrypted, so that unless you are able to infiltrate the actual host computer of a player (ie a virus), you really wouldn't be able to do much.

After using a port sniffer I find connections that only turn on when running the sites software, they don't terminate easily and may or may not be part of the legitimate feed. Now I'm not worth the trouble, but anyone choosing to infiltrate my pc wouldn't need to be very swift, just determined.

That's why I'm losing money

"Would it be possible for someone to scan for data patterns coming over servers" -- Do you mean the site's servers? kinda beats the purpose of " We all know that large resources are invested by every major site in securing the data streams and keeping the game fair." And what pattersn? do you mean you can hack into the server and get the IP addresses of individual players? I think there's things like bridges, routers etc etc... that might make it a little difficult.... and I there's encryptions all over the place.

even if you were able to somehow identify the individual system, what then? You said, "Once a player is located, if you were able to monitor the data coming to him, it would make it far easier to enjoy the positive end of expected value" - does that mean you can "monitor" the encrypted the data, decrypt it, see the hand, and make your move in under 15 seconds?

even if you were infact able to do all this, the only real benefit would be pre-flop, allowing you to steal blinds and spot bluffs - unless of course you can reverse engineer the software that deals the cards and are able to figure out exactly what the board is going to look like.

I suspect all of this would be THEORETICALY possible, but hte kind of resourses needed for this kind of a setup would run into billions of dollars and thousands of IQ points. Yes it was not a typo, I said billions of dollars, the kind of all around brute force speed needed to pull off something like this woud require thousands of high end processors, cooling systems blah blah blah..... not to mention an army of geniuses. ....The kind of resourses only available to the government, so unless you are George Bush (you really need to concentrate on you job Mr. President) - you need to stop reading Michael Crichton and start using your "cerebellar resources" in a less shameful way

P.S. and this is just talking about ONE opponent where you already have an established connection.... and everything else. Imagine what it would be like for a full 9 handed table.

Oh and having said that, your really need to be very lucky to get into a players feed that is worthwhile. You could hit an MTT player and never be on their table in months

Dont worry about it.

Also, if iirc, one of the ways that poker site maintain integrity of the game is to independently feed each player with their own data stream. So whn you see your cards, those cards were sent directly to your computer. Your opponents cards are sent to them only, they aren't sent to you and shown by card back. The card back is just a graphic placeholder. When it's time for you to see an opponent's cards, those cards are specifically sent to you at that time.

So, for someone to do what you're suggesting (trying to monitor any data streams at all), that person would have to first hack the pokersite server and get inside their firewall. And that is nearly impossible without it being an inside job. There's a reason that casino/gambling/poker websites and the porn industry lead the world in security.

perhaps you are thinking of something like poker-edge, which i do beleive will get you banned on most sites. According to poker-edge you play at full-tilt correct?

correct i do