Machines used to shuffle poker cards in US casinos can be easily hacked, researchers have found. The method, very discreet and almost undetectable, allows you to have “total control” of the parties.
In American casinos, for some major poker tournaments, dealers use card shuffling machines. The devices are supposed to prevent cheating and ensure that the cards are properly shuffled using several tools, including a camera and a cryptographic hash. Above all, according to the builder of the Deckmates, a model of these machines, they would be ” secure “and could not” not be compromised “.
Obviously, a group of hackers succeeded in hacking these machines. This is reported by Wired in an article from August 9, 2023. Fortunately for casinos and machine manufacturers, the group in question is a company, IOActive, which specializes in cybersecurity. But if they succeeded in hacking these machines, others could have done it before them.
Hack a card shuffling machine
IOActive researchers presented the results of their investigation of Deckmates at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Wired reports. According to them, it is quite possible to hack the Deckmates 2, the latest generation of these machines, in a very simple way. If a player plugs a small device into a Deckmate 2’s USB port, then it’s very easy to gain access to the machine. Precisely, the Deckmates are most of the time installed ” under a table, next to players’ knees, with their USB port exposed writes Wired. Almost child’s play.
The hack allows access to the internal camera of the machines, which normally ensures that the deck of cards is complete. Hackers can thus access this camera to know the complete order of the game in real time and from there it is very easy to send the results in real time to an accomplice playing.
This technique would allow hackers to have ” full control about poker games, Joseph Tartaro, one of IOActive’s researchers, told Wired. ” We can, for example, read data from the camera in order to know the order of play, and when the cards are dealt, we know exactly which hand each has. “. It would then be very easy to win the games, and that invisibly.
The researchers even found another way to hack into one of these machines without having to touch it, using a cellular connection. ” Some Deckmates have a cellular modem that communicates with the manufacturer, allowing them to monitor their usage writes Wired. ” In this case, a cheater might be able to place a fake cell tower nearby, trick the machine into connecting to that device rather than a real cell tower, and then use that hotspot remotely. to perform the same manipulations “.
Light & Wonder, the maker of the Deckmates, was contacted by the IOActive researchers, who informed them of their discovery. The company has indicated that it will repair the technical flaws allowing the hacks. Light & Wonder also stated that ” neither the DeckMate 2, nor any other automatic card shuffler has ever been compromised in a casino », and reminded that the tests of IOActive « were performed in a laboratory, under conditions that cannot be replicated in a regulated and monitored casino environment “.
Researchers don’t exactly agree. For them, it would be almost impossible to know if a machine has been hacked in a casino. Now all you have to do is be careful the next time you play poker in a casino, and make sure that nothing is plugged into the USB port of a card shuffling machine.
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