You could get a job working in government security with that "security in hindsight" outlook.

Once you've been pwned via your usb port, block it it. Wait until you're pwned over your LAN before going for a direct connection. Wait until you've been pwned by a poisoned DNS server / update before taking precautions against that.

My point is there are hundreds of ways your poker playing laptop can be compromised. Blocking up your USB ports is shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted - and what are you going to plug your mouse into?

As has been mentioned, the USB attack does - in theory - need to be executed as well as just plugging it in. But there have been hundreds of worms that self-propogate over USB using exploits and autorun exploits. So merely plugging it in *is* enough to exploit your system.

As someone has said already, if an intruder has physical access to your system and knows what they're doing, it's game over.

did he play hu nl on ipoker by any chance? ive heard about/played against some very suspicious players there this year. some of the screenames where

jumpingjack08
zv002
crazyyounger
ir0nman87

It´s possible. But you would need some serious resources.. magnitude of governments to exploit a fully patched up Windows just by plugging in a USB dongle

I'd disagree with that. Plenty of worms and trojans exploit USB autorun capabilities, and even commercially available exploit packs do too.

If I remember, stuxnet used a 0-day (unknown to even the software vendors) exploit to spread over USB in this way, but that was a slick piece of kit most likely created by some government.

Yeah they have multiple known vurn that they try to attack. Still those kits are probably enough to get to a high number of computers because users just don't care

But he probably just gave the file for users to execute or he ran them when the computer was not locked

innocent until proven guilty ?

given the dude scammed a lot of geezers (which seems more than likely), why should his father be involved ?
the scam- guy is a (more or less) grown up man than can and will take full responsibilty for his own actions. what does his dad have to to with it ?

what if somebody tries to ruin the life of the dad now (not that unlikely in internet-age). you think it is good to post the dads company ?

what if the dad didnt even know sunnyboy was playing cards? what can the dad do, you think one word will give back 500 K or 2 Milli ?

i think its totallly out of line to post family related stuff, as those have nothing to do with it. and one for the gallery: seems like ethical standards or nowhere higher than in the poker community.

gl to the guys getting the moniez back.

*** i played with this guy 7 days ago in SNG and it was one of his last games on stars . I put note on his fishy plays, he called reraises and drawed all 5 cards(we played 2-7 SD) and he played me before in cash 2-7, he played couple hands , moved all in couple times when we both deep 40BB and he left after 5 min and we played 2-3 sesions like that

So disgusting to hear about this kind of thing

Wow this is big

pretty sick thing to do tough...He could see everything what you're doing.

max seems pretty clearly guilty. i don't think it's that bad to involve his father/ruin business etc with the hope to recover my money (no i didn't personally get scammed) but i'm a kinda sociopathic so...

i think involving his family increases the pressure on max to cooperate

i agree. this is not northkorea where the family is responsible for the sons actions right ?

Think about it this way: X celebritys brother scams people and is a total low life.
is celebrity responsible to make up for his/hers brothers fault ? i dont think so.

edit: hope everbody gets their money back

In poker more than anything else you're likely to meet a scammer.

"Quick" friends should be handled with caution and even perhaps with some suspicion; Of course trusting is good, but awareness is much safer.

Haven't read the thread, but +1. Probably even less than 5%. So sick

ya stuxnet used like 4 0-day vulns, but as you said you're not gonna find that every day in a virus written by morons.

i'd definitely say to have a usb virus that can slip onto a patched comp undetected without any manipulation and stay undetected for a long time would require some pretty heavy resources or at least a badass programmer or two. it's definitely not 'stupid easy'

I think anyone would appear to be "legitimately talented" if they could see their opponents' hole cards

a 0-day vuln would not be necessary if you had physical access to their computer. therein lies most of the difficulty in coding a virus: one needs to find a mechanism whereby the virus can be installed onto their computer. that task becomes trivial with physical access.

as for detection by antivirus programs: if you write your own code for the virus then the virus signature can well be unique. thus there could well only be 20 odd strings of the virus in the world. i'm no coder but i assume antivirus programs work by scanning your computer for recognisable strings of code identifying programs or files as viruses. if the string is unique then i imagine the antivirus would not be able to find it. i'm no programmer so i couldn't do it however i could see how it would be a pretty easy task

He`s a grown man it has nothing to do with his ****** family

Ahhh. That explains why my bank rolls in the negative.

According to "pokerfirma.de", which interviewed an "insider" the group of scammed players confronted him, he admitted the crime and was willing to go to the police to report himself, which he did. After a few hours of interrogation he then suddenly got silent, after admitting the biggest part of the scam.

Excuse my poor english

well it happened on stars once, Kevin Chan or someone an affiliate installed a device on his clients PC stating they can play from anywhere if this SW is installed.. there were a handful of high staking referrals under this affiliate and he and his friends opened fictitious accounts to chase them down and win real big before some how stars was able to pull the rabit out of the hat... it also followed on PartyPoker and before the damage done was substantial they were able to quell it off...
this was a good two years ago, so nothing so new or novel about this.. it was orchestrated by American viets..

but its really really naive on the players part to give their personal laptops and invite a scam of this magnitude and later crib about it & make a big issue and threaten to go to Media;

its not just enough if you improve your game in online gaming, you have to be aware of the likely riskiness that can be encountered by way of such attempts by hackers or scamsters..

Now Spiegel Online (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justi...795460,00.html), one of the most popular german mainstream media websites, has published an article on this. Here is an interesting passage:
My translation:

What kind of sentence, if any at all, could the culprit face?

If those weren't police officers interrogating him, that is a kidnapping charge for them.

At least in the US.

Yep.....O.J.