New Life Games LLC
Gaming Industry News => Jays Gaming and Industry News => Topic started by: idesign on February 08, 2017, 01:00:29 PM
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Interesting Article
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine-cheat-casinos-no-fix/ (https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine-cheat-casinos-no-fix/)
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It is refreshing to see them applying their talents to things other than exposing what goes on in our political process by corrupt upper-level folks. :odie:
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How is this at all possible - the Mark VI
is not that old (i guess it is old)- I always thought that the outcome was predetermined once you press spin. Pressing spin to stop the reels to get a hit would make them skill slots - doubtful
NOW
Upon reading the article a second time - the hack may work like this - the RNG may be constantly cycling through outcomes. The hacker uses the phone to calculate the position of the RNG -
Once the state of the machine is known then the phone calculates the next time a hit will come up. The phone signals the player just before the hit is about to come up and the player quickly presses spin. May not win all the time but greatly increases the odds of getting a winning game.
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This also means that if I'm playing a machine and stop to pick my nose the jackpot may be flying by.
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On some computers their internal operating system software that creates the random number is not completely random. It produces a very long sequence of numbers, perhaps a list of millions of numbers, but they are in a certain order on the list. To a human looking at one segment of the list the numbers would seem to be totally random. But once you can identify a particular place on the list then it is possible to predict what the next numbers will be. The computer running the slot machine is cycling thru the list very quickly, going from one number to the next on the list. That's why the timing is important when the hackers told the guy to press the spin button. They had reproduced the same list of random numbers the slot machine had created, then they figured out where on the list the machine was at the time (that's what the iphone was doing for them), then they calculated when the next winning spin would occur and were waiting until the machine got to that place on the random number list to tell the guy to press the button. It didn't always work because the man couldn't instantly press the button when they wanted, but it worked often enough.
This is why some things (like software used for encryption or for lottery systems) make the random selection a different way, it is tied to some natural random event. For example, the keno ball machine is a random selection, the balls are jumping around due to air flow and one of them randomly gets selected. No way to predict which ball will get chosen.
These guys did it, the proof is in the money they won, but it takes a computer and special software to be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. Very clever thing they did.
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I just want to play the machines and pause for a while over the spin button with my IPhone in my other hand.
Just to see what trouble I can get into.....
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I just want to play the machines and pause for a while over the spin button with my IPhone in my other hand.
Just to see what trouble I can get into.....
When the suits and security guys come over to you remember to say "Hello Comrade!".
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Sounds very similar to the IGT employee who was using a cheat in other casinos, way back in the 90s I think? Back then the machines used pseudo-RNGs, like what rokgpsman was saying. It wasn't truly random. That guy had insider knowledge and was able to determine where in the string of numbers the machine was at. Took playing several games to figure that part out, but once he knew he could alter his bet accordingly, betting high when he knew a win was coming and betting low otherwise. Machines nowadays use true random generators, so that approach is no longer workable.