After the story hit the poker industry media headlines that Absolute Poker had a super player who was cleaning up at the online poker tables in such a way that players suspected that the player was cheating, with an investigation proving that the player was a company insider.
The online poker room took a huge hit to both traffic and reputation and with the brands hitting the news headlines once again, the online poker rooms are set to be rocked once again after Poker Table Rankings revealed that the software used by the poker rooms were open to security exploitation.
The security breach meant that a person was able to power two computers with one connected to the online poker room and the other pulling ‘packets’ of information while the poker rooms server was pulling information such as a players personal data or even reveal their hole cards.
After testing the security of the online poker software, Poker Table Rankings contacted the online poker rooms hosted within the Cereus Gaming Network, proving video proof that the exploit could be done.
The video proof was then recreated by the finder, this time showing a scaled down version of the exploit in action, calling his hole cards on the second computer at the same time as the cards were dealt on the computer connected to the online poker room.
The news sent shockwaves through the online poker world, with many webmasters who partner the online poker rooms within the network questioning the honesty of the video.
An affiliate that is well known within the industry then called on a friend of his to recreate the exploit with the purpose of confirming the findings for hundreds of webmasters and the news wasn’t good for those pushing their traffic to the effected poker rooms.
The re-creation saw the person who tried the exploit manage to mimic the actions of the original video and only once their proof was offered did a number of large name affiliates pull the plug on their promotion of the Cereus Network ran sites.
Poker Table Rankings have been very honest about their findings and have even disclosed the email response that they received from Paul Leget, Managing Director of Cereus Network’s mother company.
The email read:
“We really value your email regarding the security hole on our network. We have watched your video and I honestly believe that you did a great job to the poker community by informing us and the players regarding this issue.
We would like to ensure you that this is an extremely important issue to us and we are working towards to the best solution as soon as possible. We would also like your contribution in resolving this matter, if you provide that kind of services.
Please publish this response to your website and inform the players that in order to suffer than kind of illegal attempt the hacker must have access to their local network.”
All that we can conclude from this story is that with the online poker rooms hosted within the Cereus Network proving that they simply can’t protect their members from unfair gaming, should they even be allowed to continue trading?
