what was this about?

Can somebody suggest what is the smoothest way to protect our laptops if we do plan on leaving our laptop for example in a house with unknown poker players.

It depends on how motivated and skillful the "attacker" is - but I'll say that TrueCrypt full disk encryption will probably give you the best protection in that scenario. If you're interested, google "evil maid attack" on TrueCrypt, but if you're a casual player and your laptop is left in the care of casual computer users, TrueCrypt will give you the best protection in that scenario.

That said, in computer security there's a saying along the lines of "If an attacker has physical access to your machine, it's game over". TrueCrypt will make your computer thousands of times more difficult to backdoor (with physical access) than one without.. from a software point of view. TrueCrypt won't stop someone planting a hardware keylogger somewhere in your laptop. Security is all about balance and a proper mindset.. you'll never stop a determined attacker.

Trojans are very hard to defend against because they replicate features legitimate software does as well and the better the security the more painful it becomes as an end-user.

#1 Don't let anyone use your computer. If you must let them use your computer, give them a generic guest login.

#2 If I was a nosebleed player, I'd always be playing on a sandboxed VM every single session that NEVER has anything installed to it but chrome/opera, HEM/PT, and the various poker clients for sites that I frequent. The Host OS would be MacOS running VMWare and the Guest OS Win7 where needed.

You're never going to eradicate cheating so to avoid becoming a victim limit your vulnerability.

Edit: The sophistication for hardware hacks is not necessary in today's world and are so specialized that it would require several minutes to install. If I were to attack a computer physically the best spot to target would be the USB hub architecture. Think of each port on your computer as a way in for an intruder. Regardless though, you defend against these attacks by sandboxing your environment....cuz HW needs drivers which = "software installed." No drivers, no device.

Someone posted a thread in NVG saying they were hacked/remotely controlled by FW. They had him take control of their machine and install some partition/security, can't remember specifics. Then within a couple of days (?) someone had remotely accessed their clients and their room mates clients (?) and rinsed their accounts on casino betting to the tune of 100k+.

The OP admitted to downloading pirated Windows software from torrent sites BEFORE FW worked on his PC.

The OP posted no evidence and the thread was very quickly shut down for that reason, as it was very damaging to FW rep and name to have that thread up there... with no evidence, seems pretty similar to this thread.

I tried to find the thread for you by searching for Funkyworms and then looking through his previous posts (he posted a statement in the thread) but it appears to have been completely removed from 2p2.

I'm not a technician...
But I open up my (4) laptops all the time...
Install SSD drives, etc...
They ALL use the same standard parts...
You just need a good set of micro screwdrivers.

I could probably replace the drive in 60-120 seconds...
A technician probably installs a custom part just as fast.

Why would anyone leave a laptop "with poker players"...
Can't put it in the trunk of your car?

And TrueCrypt is not for ordinary people...
Most corporations spend the $150/PC for PGP...
Because it's FAR more user friendly...
And even US military could not crack PGP laptop...
As long as it's powered off + strong password.

You mean to say they could "crack" TrueCrypt? ^^

Your sample size is too small.
I doubt you could replace an internal drive in any laptop in under 2 minutes. The likelihood of removing the keyboard in the same amount of time is even more remote. I also don't think replacing someone's hard drive accomplishes much as they will likely notice when their OS and all of their files are missing.
I agree but I'd suggest buying some sort of lockable device that you can keep in your room. Trunks aren't climate controlled. Laptops don't like moisture, vibration, or large temperature changes.
This isn't why corporations use PGP over Truecrypt. Key management is the main reason.

Bump- this seems like too big of news to be on Page 3 NVG

If you're more concerned with infiltration than theft, there are lockable aluminum or steel laptop briefcases available for that sort of protection.

From what little we know about this case, it appears that it would not be a keylogger, but would be a surreptitious screen capture and send.

It is the hole card info that the scammer would need, not keystrokes.

Everyone watch your stuff. I know a friend (but which one) hacked my machine and Im not sure if they got my IP and got in or physically got it, I did have virus scanners on the machine so check out this little work around

They made themselves an admin account, they took off my newer version of virus scan, the reverted back to the 30 day trial version of the of the software of the year before, which basically meant I had no protection even though it looked like I did. To add even more fun, all my files folders where made into pictures so I didnt knwo what picture where files and which were not. To add even more fun the did a restore of everything ever deleted on my hard drive and then started flashing them up for me at several points. To add even more fun my mail from one of my accounts (or maybe all ) were being sent to this person

Their were a few warning signs I overlooked. At time my wife would tell me 2 blue line appeared at the bottom of my screen when it was booting up (THIS WAS like 2004 so what ever WIndows was big then) and also one of my mail accounts would always shut down the machine and I thought I had just having a conflict

Remember when connecting to a network had the graphic of the lines from your pc to your modem, well one day for even more fun, that line disappeared and the modem icon disappeared and something that looked like a walkie talkie (or phone) icon appeared as my connection and BAM I got locked out of my own PC.

I said Ok Ill slap a new hard drive in and find out, NOPE they got into the boot sector of the BIOS so I had no clue what to do from here. But the new drive was instantly infected too. I couldnt install new virus software as I wasnt allowed anymore on my machine, as I said they reverted my old virus protection to olderversion trial

Lucky me I was trying to keep a paerless enviroment and was slack on backs up so basically lost every important paper and pictures I had kept for over a decade. Basically destroyed computer, and even tried to go computer less but that was hard.

HAS ANYONE EVERY SAW OR HAD ANYTHING REMOTELY LIKE THIS HAPPEN,

I know it had to be someone I knew because they didnt steal a dime but had full access to all my logins since I was using while it was infected. STUFF IS JUST SCARY

Agreed, but I think when most people use the term "keylogger", they're talking about generic spyware or remote access tools which will likely include keyloggers, screen captures, file browsers, etc.

Lol. This is why we have remote redundant backups and also why we use proxyencryption for out internetconnection when adressing important things such as bankwire and poker

While these security measures might seem basic to you the vast majority of us dont have a clue what your talking about. Norton antivirus and having the firewall turned on is the most that can be expected from 99% of people.

The only way to keep safe is to not let anyone near your pc and only use it for poker.

he touched my computer aswell. my computer is rebooted so cant look up if he scammed me or not. do u know what accounts he played with on ipoker and ongame? what was his playstyle when he played?

Can you try being even more insecure?

It's disturbing that there hasn't been any news on this... I'm interested as to what actually happened.

2p2 sleuths commence thou sleuthing.

my english is not the best but here are some news.

according to hochgepokert hes on the run/escape and is in Qatar.

The victims are from austria, germany, england, netherlands, switzerland and they are working on the investigation. they doubt the police with no knowledge about the online poker world is able to get this done so they investigate on their own and then want to bring it to court in london.

There was also an interview with niki jedlicka (one of the victims)a few days ago.

some cliffs of the interview

niki lost 350k to max in a few hours.

the reason they went to his hotel room and confronted him is that one victim called max on the phone and confronted him with the accusations. initial plan was to wait and investigate before confronting him with police.

on the police station max confessed but when a cop told him he might go to prison for 10 years he decided to say hes no guilty.

niki doesnt hate max. wasnt big percentage of his roll and he doesnt value money so much anyway. but ofcause hes not happy about it.

max was actually a good player back in the days. made more than 1 million $ playing plo on full tilt. but he went broke and had a lot of debts.
thats when he decided to start his "comeback" with the trojan.

max pretty much destroyed some poker players. for example there was a player who normally played 2000$ hunsg got crushed by max and had to move down again and again. but max followed him down in the limits (everytime with a different account). this went so far that the players bankroll was so small he had to play 100$ husngs and even then max kept playing him (again with different account).

there are victims who never had personal contact with max but had the trojan on their computer. so there might be several scammers/partners.

Wow he`ll get serious time if they recount the story of the HUSNGS with evidence- thats really scummy. Niki is obv a sicko as well ofc.
Getting the info on the fulltilt stuff cud obv be difficult- the case might hinge on the confessions admissibility into court.

Cliffs of news:
Niki Jedlicka lost 350k and is one of the victims who confronted the cheater in his hotel room.

Links to the original articles:
http://www.hochgepokert.com/2011/11/...r-zertrummert/
http://www.hochgepokert.com/2011/11/...ersten-fakten/

Mods, thread needs a better title!

so disgusting

mods just make it sticky or something.