Geek Hacking
The scary subject of internet security was shoved into my face this week and it is not a nice thing to have I tell you. All though everything was Ok in the end, it seems that ‘Joe Public’ will be attacked and hacked by all sorts of individuals and organisations who want to poke around your stuff and either steal it or destroy it. I suppose it is equivalent to a Friday night in Newcastle or Birmingham in which anti-social behaviour is routine.
This leads me onto another story of a online poker player having his account hacked after he clicked onto a link which then placed a trojan onto his computer and stole his password giving the hacker the ability to steal over $100,000! The method used was the double extension in which .jpg is followed by .exe. A lot of people see the ‘jpg’ bit and forget the ‘exe’, which then does the damage.
It seems that online poker does get it regular hacking stories as tories get in trouble for sex scandals. Do you remember the Zynga hacking story in which a guy stole billions of Zynga money token which worth around $10,000,000+! The thing that surprised me was the ‘value’ put on a game without any real monetary objective except the chance to buy imaginary money.
I hate to refer back to our US brothers and sisters but we online poker players really do need a US regulated market on board. Having the US on board will not stop hacking, but, it will help to regulate best practices and allow players to go to sites which will perform to higher standards, which mean better security for the players money. It is so easy to see stories of online poker firms disappearing with money from unsuspecting depositors.
Just look at what happened with ‘Hackgate’ and The LIBOR scandal all which was rooted out in the US first and thank god for that. I have in the past made fun out of the crazy politics and really childish behaviour exhibited by some high profile figures. However, having a written constitution which gives people the right to challenge authority and seek the truth via open debate is a great thing and the sooner they bring this standard of behaviour to online poker. I suppose the chance of a fully fledged federal law allowing online poker to properly exist in the US will have to wait until the election on November 6th, 2012.