As if Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker didn’t have enough to worry about, a new security gap has been drawing unwanted attention over the past few days. It seems that, due to a hole in the local encryption utilized by the Cereus Poker Network, it is possible that some players may have fallen victim to digital card-peaking.
The flaw was made evident in an article posted on Poker Table Ratings, the group which was able to crack the company’s encryption. Potential intruders would have been able to exploit this gap in coverage, allowing them to see the users hole cards, and possibly access other information regarding their account and computer system.
Cereus and Tokwiro COO Paul Legett broke the news to customers in a blog on Ultimate Bet, where he had the following to say:
“I would like to start by reminding everyone that someone would have to have the technical capabilities to crack the encryption method we currently use and they would also have to hack into your local network in order to gain access to sensitive data. We are currently working on implementing a new encryption method and we expect to have it live in a matter of hours.”
He would go on to state that, “So far, we have no reason to believe anyone has exploited this vulnerability but we have just begun investigating users that our players have requested.” UB is planning to review all serious complaints regarding the matter, hoping to allay and suspicions from the general public.
So, it seems as the the possibility of players suffering from this potential hack is rather slim. However, such a lapse will not inspire confidence among the company’s already challenged user base. If their audits failed to register such a glaring problem, one wonders what else they could possibly be missing.
All publicity is good publicity, a wise man once said. In this case, we at FlopTurnRiver would have to disagree.