Carnal Reason

Sometimes a crime is so imaginative that it approaches art. I once read of a case of identity theft where the victim had secured identity theft insurance. When he tried to collect, he learned that the thief had beaten him to it. This one is nowhere near that good, but still interesting.

A programmer hired by an online poker tools site snuck a trojan into an application he was hired to develop, unleashing a rootkit on users’ machines that could then be used to steal their passwords to online casinos and poker sites. An anti-virus company says the rootkit is particularly malicious because the hacker could take a victim’s money without making it look stolen — by using the passwords to log on to a poker site, then playing very badly against players controlled by the hacker. The victims are then left with little recourse, since it looks like they just lost their money during normal play.

Techdirt

I find it hard to believe that people will gamble for money online. Their faith in computer security is almost touching. There are many more than one born every minute.

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General