Feds Drop CFAA Charges Against 'Hacker' Who Exploited Poker Machines

FuzzNugget writes "According to Wired, the two CFAA charges that were laid against the man who exploited a software bug on a video poker machine have been officially dismissed. Says Wired: '[U.S. District Judge Miranda] Du had asked prosecutors to defend their use of the federal anti-hacking law by Wednesday, in light of a recent 9th Circuit ruling that reigned in the scope of the CFAA. The dismissal leaves John Kane, 54, and Andre Nestor, 41, facing a single remaining charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.' Kane's lawyer agreed, stating, 'The case never should have been filed under the CFAA, it should have been just a straight wire fraud case. And I'm not sure its even a wire fraud. I guess we'll find out when we go to trial.'"

Comments

Aaron Swartz must be

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

spinning in his grave.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Anonymous Coward]

it's because of his death they are afraid to abuse that law. they hope by following it's intent people demanding this tool prosecutors overreach and use to prosecute people they shouldn't with won't get rid of it until the heat dies down. and then they can abuse it all they want again.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Smallpond]

So from now on I can get out of any crime by threatening suicide? The DAs are all quaking in their boots.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Anonymous Coward]

So from now on I can get out of any crime by threatening suicide?

no. the only way that plan would work is if you succeed at suicide.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if someone else succeeds...

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Nexus7]

Like with Swartz, this is the prosecutors Christmas-treeing up the charges, to psych and make it too expensive for the defendants; and make them settle - for money, some jail time, whatever. That way they can chalk one up in the win column, which looks pretty good when they run for office. I'm assuming the defendant here was white, because if he were black, I'd expect to see charges for tax evasion, aiding offshore combatants, and possession of skills with intention to use for mass destruction of capitalism.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[cayenne8]

This case is similar to the situation where they were trying to basically charge that older lady that taunted a girl so badly that the girl committed suicide, with basically computer hacking, since she technically broke the TOS of the social networking sites she used to do that.

A reprehensible act, sure, but not computer hacking like they were trying to charge her with...

That's why I'm adament about looking very closely at new laws as they come out and always look for how the authorities *might* abuse it in the future.

So, far, I've not really ever seen a law that authorities didn't try to extend way beyond the original intent to try to prosecute someone for something where no law currently exists, or other reasons.

Re:Aaron Swartz must be

[Anonymous Coward]

...So, far, I've not really ever seen a law that authorities didn't almost immediately try to extend way beyond the original intent to try to prosecute someone for something where no law currently exists, or other reasons.

FTFY

Know when to hold em

[Anonymous Coward]

You got to know when to hold em.
Know when to fold em.
Know when to walk away, know when to run.

Re:Know when to hold em

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently they missed the "know when to run" part

Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this madness? Glitches are part of video games. Even speedrunners know that.

Re:Glitches

[Fluffeh]

Yes, but apparently if you profit off a glitch, it is your fault and yu are a bad person however if you simply write a buggy poker machine slot machine game thingy, you are just A-Okay.

To me, this is exactly like charging a person who uses a buggy phone that gives them free calls every other call with fraud. They bought the phone as is, made no changes to it and they are being charged. These guys didn't change the code in the poker machine, they just knew what buttons to press after putting money in. If anything, they should be celebrated as the folks that beat the gaming industry.

Re:Glitches

[Dorianny]

Its all in the EULA you agreed to when you clicked on the button. Didn't you read the incomprehendable fine print?

Re:Glitches

[tlhIngan]

Yes, but apparently if you profit off a glitch, it is your fault and yu are a bad person however if you simply write a buggy poker machine slot machine game thingy, you are just A-Okay.

To me, this is exactly like charging a person who uses a buggy phone that gives them free calls every other call with fraud. They bought the phone as is, made no changes to it and they are being charged. These guys didn't change the code in the poker machine, they just knew what buttons to press after putting money in. If anything, they should be celebrated as the folks that beat the gaming industry.

Except most casinos have a very specific clause that says all winnings are scrutinized and may be denied if the winnings are as a result of a machine fault.

Yes, a casino is NOT a way to make money - if you treat them as a form of entertainment rather than money making, you're closer to the actual reality of what a casino actually is.

You cannot win. It's why if you do win a jackpot, the machine you used is immediately isolated and wheeled away to confirm the win, verify there's no shenanigans with the machine, and to verify there's no faults with the machine. And yes, if they forget to update the game firmware, that counts as a fault and your winnings will be denied.

In fact, all that really has to happen is the guy gets billed for all his winnings due to faulty machines. No muss, no fuss, no criminal charges. Just a big ass bill having to repay every single dollar won.

Re:Glitches

[redmid17]

Have you ever actually played the slots?

Can't say it seems like it

Re:Glitches

[JabberWokky]

And yes, if they forget to update the game firmware, that counts as a fault and your winnings will be denied.

I may be wrong, but I believe they do get fined and the fault recorded. Gaming associations are intended to close down establishments who have too many "mistakes" like that.

Now, I have zero experience with the reality. The way the article reads, it seems that the Nevada’s Gaming Control Board swooped in to oversee things closely. The jaded or masturbacynical will see this as "the system is rotten, they are there just to protect the casinos run by the *man*, man!", and the naive will believe government enforcement always works for the innocent person. The reality is somewhere between Goofy and the "we are nihilists" crowd's view, and egregious errors are corrected according to regulations.

Which really hits the thing this article never covered (or I missed it). Sure there's legal prosecution going on now, but were the winnings illegitimate according to the Pennsylvania and Nevada statutes?

Re:Glitches

[felixrising]

Where is my mod points when I need them! Mod up!

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking something that isn't yours is stealing, even if the owner makes it easy.

Re:Glitches

[Stolpskott]

To me, this is exactly like charging a person who uses a buggy phone that gives them free calls every other call with fraud. They bought the phone as is, made no changes to it and they are being charged. These guys didn't change the code in the poker machine, they just knew what buttons to press after putting money in. If anything, they should be celebrated as the folks that beat the gaming industry.

While I agree that using CFAA to prosecute these guys was prosecutorial overreach of the abusive kind, the cellphone analogy does not quite work (close though :-) ) - if the "normal" operating process for the poker machine is "put money in", "play", "complete game", "cash out/play again/insert more money and repeat", and the guys were doing this, then the analogy would work.
But the actual process was one that was so illogical that the only statistically likely way to discover it would be with inside information or via hacking. Probably the prosecutors originally assumed this was the case and were looking at using CFAA, and decided to be lazy and press on with abusive over-reach instead of re-adjusting to use more appropriate legislation when their initial investigations. Alternatively, the prosecutors could actually have, SHOCK AND HORROR, actually done their job properly, and looked at all of the available evidence and THEN decided what statutes they were going to try and run the prosecution under to aim for a conviction based on the actual discovered evidence rather than their own assumptions or that one of them really wanted to try a CFAA case.

Having said that it is statistically likely to have been uncovered with inside information or hacking, the number of times people have played these machines means that there was still a slim but significant possibility of it being discovered by accident as seems to have happened here, and in those cases (as far as I am aware) there is no legal requirement for him to report the "malfunctioning" equipment to either the casino or the manufacturer so the worst thing that could be done to him legally is for the casino to ban him from their establishments and for the casino to take the matter up with the manufacturer, using a civil law suit to recover the lost money from the manufacturer, who then makes a claim on some liability insurance or other (and if I am wrong about him not having a duty to report the problem, then it is a civil problem between the casino and the patron).

Re:Glitches

[AK Marc]

Is it stealing if the owner gives it to you mistakenly?

He was presented a game. He played the game. He won. He was prosecuted. He did not cheat to win the game. He did not take anything that wasn't freely given.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, following your logic, can I sue them in this case as personal trauma? I came to have fun, I payed for it, and I was denied it. It's services not provided to the full, as customer I have rights, right? In fact, I was put down, which i consider to be damaging to my mental health. I was investigated, etc...

My idea of having funs is having money at casino expense btw. So no matter how you put it - casino is wrong.

Re:Glitches

[wienerschnizzel]

I assume you didn't read into the case. The prosecutors were never trying to argue that Nestor (the accused) used hacking to find the glitch. They were trying to argue that the combination of keys that activates the glitch is so complex that it should by itself be considered 'hacking'.

However, the 'combination of keys' used was not that extraordinary - all were legal game-play moves. Boiled down to the fact that switching a denomination of a game could change the payout the machine would give you on games you already won (but did not cash out yet).

The prosecution was trying to paint is as access rights violation but they failed to show just what exactly did the defendants do that they were 'not entitled' to do.

It still might be a fraud. Especially since Nestor convinced the operator in one case to switch on the feature that enabled the glitch. But hacking is out of the question.

Re:Glitches

[tofarr]

In real poker, if you see that your opponent has a 'tell' and use that against them, does that make you guilty of fraud? No. IMHO, mame thing applies here

Re:Glitches

[Fluffeh]

There is no EULA on a poker machine.

What you see is what you get.. no wait... what you see is what takes your money... No, hang on, let me word this... What you see should take your money... and if it doesn't then you can be hit with all sorts of charges... Hmmm, that doesn't sound as good as my original line...

Re:Glitches

[chrismcb]

But the actual process was one that was so illogical that the only statistically likely way to discover it would be with inside information or via hacking.

Really?
How about the guy is playing for pennies... Wins. But its only pennies. Decides to play another game, also wins. Figures may as well raise the stakes, since he keeps winning. Raises his bet, then remembers he didn't cash out his first win.
It isn't as convoluted as it sounds.

Re:Glitches

[Fluffeh]

Taking something that isn't yours is stealing, even if the owner makes it easy.

This is gambling however. It's like playing a game of poker where you aren't supposed to see the cards, but one player is showing them to you. It is HIS/HER fault. Using the knowledge of that players cards in your betting and game is fine-and-dandy with me. Each player should be covering his cards.

This is a slot machine, it is a perfectly legal profit center for casinos and gaming establishments to strip money away from the poor, addicted, weak-minded and the like. This isn't a case where a chap sneaks into a software design company, steals the code for a slot machine and sells it to another developer. This is out and out poor coding that has bitten someone in the ass and they are suing the guy who noticed it. If I was semi-omnipotent (whereby had the power to change who got fined, but not whether they got fined) I would be slugging any fine directly to the company who coded this rubbish in the first place.

And seeing as I am in a somewhat antagonistic mood, please enlighten me on how enticing dim-witted souls into thinking that they have a real chance of winning money, as compared to in reality siphoning off their meager funds isn't stealing. Casinos are nothing short of a way for someone to profit off the addictions, simple-wits and guilability of those beneath them - and this is said from someone who has made a good deal of money from playing poker - the real kind, against other players, not the poker-machine type. If you ask me, they should be totally and utterly, without the slightest hesitation, liable for any mistakes on their part, any badly written gaming machines, or any-and-all dumb-shittery, mental-fuck-up-edness or downright incompetence on their part.

Re:Glitches

[schwit1]

In poker you are play against the person not his cards.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

No, stop telling me what to do.

Re:Glitches

[Dragonslicer]

Go back and read the details of what happened. They are accused of intentionally exploiting a glitch in the machine to fraudulently win hundreds of thousands of dollars. If it happens to you once because you unknowingly pressed that particular combination of buttons, you most likely won't be facing criminal charges. Once you know about it, though, if you continue to intentionally exploit the glitch, you're taking someone else's money contrary to their intended means. Similarly, it's illegal to intentionally exploit a glitch in an ATM to get more money than is deducted from your account, or to walk into somebody's house and take their stuff because they forgot to lock their door.

Re:Glitches

[IndustrialComplex]

It still might be a fraud. Especially since Nestor convinced the operator in one case to switch on the feature that enabled the glitch. But hacking is out of the question.

I'm not so sure, I think it's pretty damned close to hacking.

Let's say I go to Amazon, and I discover that by clicking on a series of links, I get refunded 50% of my previous purchase. I don't know WHY that happens, but I figure out that it does, and now after every purchase, I click that series of links and get refunded that 50%.

Does it matter if I don't physically know that what those clicks are doing is causing a buffer overrun in some portion of Amazon's code which overwrites my previous order's value? (I'm not a hacker, so assume what I typed made sense) All I did was interact with Amazon's interface, yet it was clear that whatever it I was doing to that interface was refunding me money to which I was not entitled to.

I would argue that it IS hacking (but in a very shallow sense) when he used a known bug to cause a computer system to behave in a manner which he knew was incorrect. If he stopped at that point, I'd have a hard time justifying it as 'hacking' as we understand it to be, but when he took it further and used it to steal money, he made it clear that he understood his actions were causing the computer system to behave in a manner which was not intended by the owner of the system.

Again, not 'hacking', but so close to hacking that I'm not sure where I stand on the issue.

Re:Glitches

[ShaunC]

Awesome, you just coined a new term, and I like it.

Re:Glitches

[TheCarp]

and this is said from someone who has made a good deal of money from playing poker - the real kind, against other players, not the poker-machine type. If you ask me, they should be totally and utterly, without the slightest hesitation, liable for any mistakes on their part, any badly written gaming machines, or any-and-all dumb-shittery, mental-fuck-up-edness or downright incompetence on their part.

I fully agree here. I read the article to see how this worked, clearly if he was doing something obviously wrong, like flashing roms, or manipulating the device in some way, I would say he is in the wrong...

Instead, he found that some added feature on the game instituted rules which, as it turned out, allowed him to effectively retroactively increase his bets.

I would agree this is cheating if it was being done through almost any other mechanism but, they added this rule into the system, they allowed it to carry between games, and it to be applied to an unclaimed win in another game.

It reminds me of losing a magic game to a rules lawyer based on a technical point that I didn't understand until he explained it. It sucks, but, its the game. Maybe it means the game needs to be fixed, but, its not his fault for finding out that there was a particularly advantageous style of play; and it shouldn't invalidate his prior wins. This is especially true of any casinos which (and its clear they did) continued to leave the feature activated even after becoming aware of it.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse, if said glitch causes the player to lose then the excuse is "well, it's been thoroughly tested and retested so you must be mistaken and it's your loss".

Re:Glitches

[JesseMcDonald]

Is it stealing if the owner gives it to you mistakenly?

In order for someone else's property to become yours there has to be a valid contract. Not necessarily a written contract, or even a verbal one; in cases like this the contract is implicit. Nonetheless, in order for any contract to be valid there has to be this thing called "meeting of the minds". In other words, the original owner and prospective owner have to be in agreement regarding the terms of the contract.

For the owner to give you something "mistakenly" implies that there was no meeting of the minds. Their idea of what conditions were met or what they would receive in return does not match yours. Ergo, there was no valid contract, and the original owner retains the title to the property.

If you knew this up front, for example because you were deliberately defrauding the owner, then you are a thief; you knowingly took property that did not belong to you. If you find out about the disagreement after the fact and return the property on request, then there is no harm done. If you refuse to return the property, however, then from that point on you are withholding the property from its rightful owner, which once again makes you a thief.

In this case, it's not as simple as "He played the game. He won." He played the game and was rewarded with a specific payout. He then took steps which led to the machine vending significantly more money than advertised. A reasonable argument can be made that the owner only agreed to the advertised payout, not the amount the machine actually vended. The rest of the money vended would not be covered by that implicit contract, and was thus stolen.

Re:Glitches

[jedidiah]

This is just the way the industry operates. The house is supposed to win. If you violate this, then somehow you are a cheat or something else that justifies you being ejected from the premises and put on a blacklist.

It's a total double standard and yet another reason to avoid these establishments.

Re:Glitches

[jedidiah]

I dunno. He says you cannot win.

That sounds like a pretty good summary of playing slots.

Re:Glitches

[jedidiah]

It's gambling and you are talking about morality. You're really funny.

Re:Glitches

[serviscope_minor]

its not his fault for finding out that there was a particularly advantageous style of play

In fact casinos rely on people believing that they have a "system" or advantageous style of play when in reality they do not (on the whole). I suppose the question is if the casion had a faulty roulette wheel which increased the frequency of some particular region would the casino be entitled to keep any winnings?

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

This is gambling however. It's like playing a game of poker where you aren't supposed to see the cards, but one player is showing them to you. It is HIS/HER fault.

Not Really.

A much better analogy would be that this is the digital equivalent of figuring out that you can stick your arm inside the slot machine and just grab the coins. Bad design? Yes. OK? No.

Condoning this is a slippery slope to just saying "I should have the right to take anything that isn't nailed down, and if the owner catches me in the act there should be no consequences for me, because fuck him for not securing his property better."

I like to live in a country of laws, and the simpler the better. Stealing is illegal. Gambling is (mostly) legal. Property rights should not be modulated by the perceived morality of the property owner.

Just because you feel morally superior to both the customers and the operators of a casino, doesn't mean it should be OK for one group or the other to have their property stolen.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

They are accused of intentionally exploiting a glitch in the machine to fraudulently win hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In gambling, I don't see the problem here. In gambling, it is everyone's intention to take everyone else's money. Why are you at fault just because the house was a bad gambler for once? It's hard to compare this to anything because gambling is specifically a game everyone is trying to take someone else's money while giving nothing in return. As a player I don't have an equal exchange contract when I gamble. I want your money and will take it how ever I can within the rules of the game you have set out for me to play.

Re:Glitches

[TheCarp]

>In fact casinos rely on people believing that they have a "system" or advantageous style of play when in reality they do not (on the whole).

well that does depend on what you mean by advantageous. There certainly are advantageous strategies in almost every game..... if you are willing to consider them as advantageous in relation to far worst strategies.

Examples abound, of course, but, the general rule seems to be that the best odds are from the base bet and addons, while they have higher payouts, have odds which are worst enough to more than compensate for the payouts. From my experience having looked at a few games and a couple of slots, it seems to be the base return on your bets is in the high 90% range, 97-99%. (so, over time they pay back most of the money you bet, and each round only represents an average of a 1-3% loss)

Then they usually pack on extra bets, chances to "double down" or "buy insurance". These typically have far worst payouts over time, often taking an average of 30% or more for the house on those bets.

Which is funny, because all of those add-ons, are usually setup in such a way to make people think they are getting some advantage...when they really are the most pessimal bets you can make.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say some feature instituted rules to allow this, you are being a little bit disingenuous. The double up feature payout was supposed to pay a particular amount based on the amount previously bet, and that amount was displayed on screen. Through his method of interrupting that process he exploited a bug to cause the amount to be recalculated based on a higher bet amount, allowing him to increase his winnings 10 fold. It was not an intentional rule, but a programming flaw.

For comparison, if my online banking system has an input box for me to enter an amount of money to transfer, and I input a sql statement that results in transferring millions from some other account I don't own, is that still ok? I mean, the bank made the input form and the logic to handle it. It was their rules that executed the sql statement. Or would it only be ok if this was an input form for an online gambling site, since perhaps laws should only apply to the business we think are morally worthy... is that a slope you want to go down?

Re:Glitches

[xevioso]

This, of course, is ludicrous.

I can walk into a casino, put in 5$ in a slot machine, and immediately win 1$. I then cash out, and I now have 6$. I won.

Of course, most people don't do this, and they keep putting money in.

But you can win at video poker.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cannot win" implies a 0% chance of winning. But by law, slots are required to give out some where around 80% of what it takes in. I do not recall the actual number. But the point is, with that knowledge, someone could probably word that in such a way to indicate an actual, non-zero percent chance of winning.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it stealing if the owner gives it to you mistakenly?

If you deliberately attempt to induce the mistake, then yes, it is.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how that's hacking. Besides that, this is gambling against a house, not a purchase. It's already a shadey practice for the machine owner anyways. There is no equal exchange of goods. The game play itself is not an equal exchange. Very few people pay just to play. Most pay because they hope they will get it back and more.

Re:Glitches

[AK Marc]

Since he didn't try to induce the programming error that resulted in the payout he received, then you are asserting he is completely innocent.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Since he didn't try to induce the programming error

He did. He duped a technician into loading the firmware with the bug.

Re:Glitches

[TheCarp]

When you say some feature instituted rules to allow this, you are being a little bit disingenuous. The double up feature payout was supposed to pay a particular amount based on the amount previously bet, and that amount was displayed on screen. Through his method of interrupting that process he exploited a bug to cause the amount to be recalculated based on a higher bet amount, allowing him to increase his winnings 10 fold. It was not an intentional rule, but a programming flaw.

A little bit yes.

The thing is, his method of interrupting is something the game allowed, that is, switching games. Was it the intention that an action in one game (triggering the special bet scenario) could be applied to switched games? Beats me, I bet that wasn't spelled out anywhere specific.

Certainly it wasn't their intention to allow it to apply retroactively. However, it did, and the fact that it shouldn't was likely no more spelled out than whether the special bet was intended to be applied. It is, as they said, something he found through playing the game alot and noticed.

In the end, I look at it this way... he walked up to a machine and played it, he didn't manipulate the machine in any way other than using the intended interface, and he didn't exploit any internal knowledge (like if he had known there was some special debug mode that could be entered with the right sequence).

Since the house makes the rules, and the house is responsible for making sure the machine is in order, any ambiguity in the rules of play, even tenuous ambiguity, really should default to the players favour; if for no other reason than it puts the incentive to fix the problem squarely where it belongs.

Re:Glitches

[foreverdisillusioned]

Ok. So by extension, if you mix up a $100 chip for a $10 chip and it's obvious you did so (saying "I'm betting ten dollars" to the people around you. And maybe you're colorblind, etc.), do you think that you'd stand a chance in hell getting your $90 back? And yet there was no 'meeting of minds'! So, do believe the owners/operators of the casino should be charged with criminal fraud, sending them in prison for years, permanently nullifying their civil rights, screwing them over whenever they try to apply for jobs for the rest of their lives?

Or, you know, maybe it's the responsibility of the gamblers to be aware of the world around them. To accept responsibilities for their own fuckups. And by the same token, perhaps someone who set up a faulty gambling device that mistakenly gives a statistical edge to the player (when normally the edge always goes to the owner) should be expected to suffer the consequences of their own ineptitude instead of blaming others. It's sickeningly twisted to argue it's legal for casinos to profit from player ignorance/incompetence/misunderstandings (without these things the gambling industry would shrink dramatically) but illegal for the reverse to ever occur.

Re:Glitches

[foreverdisillusioned]

And to be strictly clear here, this *was* technically just a statistical edge, since it apparently required the player to accumulate some winnings before activating the bug. It's possible for the player to continually lose. It's still a game of chance, just with the odds dramatically shifted.

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

> profit off the addictions, simple-wits and guilability of those beneath them

I see gullibility isn't in your dictionary, too.

:)

Re:Glitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Spending $5 to win $1 for an end result of being $4 in the hole is winning?

Wanna play poker sometime? lol

Re:Glitches

[JesseMcDonald]

So by extension, if you mix up a $100 chip for a $10 chip and it's obvious you did so (saying "I'm betting ten dollars" to the people around you. And maybe you're colorblind, etc.), do you think that you'd stand a chance in hell getting your $90 back?

They would certainly owe it to you. If the casino's representative accepted a $100 chip when it was clear you only meant to play a $10 chip, they would be in exactly the same position as a player who accepted a $100 payout when it was clear they were only meant to receive a $10 payout. Either way, it's up to the losing side to pursue the case. If you're complaining that the courts tend to be biased in favor of the casino, I agree, but that's a separate problem.

So, do [you] believe the owners/operators of the casino should be charged with criminal fraud, sending them in prison for years, permanently nullifying their civil rights, screwing them over whenever they try to apply for jobs for the rest of their lives?

None of the above. Fraud is a civil matter, and any of these responses would be clearly disproportionate to the offense. "Nullifying their civil rights" wouldn't even be constitutional.

Re:Glitches

[foreverdisillusioned]

Um. Maybe you should read the article? Or at least the summary. There is such a thing as criminal fraud and these guys are apparently going to be charged with it. Civil rights can and are revoked for felons even after they serve their sentence. My point is if it's ok to arrest people for taking advantage of mistakes made by the producers/owners of the gambling devices, it should also be ok to arrest members of "the house" if it takes advantage of a mistake made by a player.

"If you're complaining that the courts tend to be biased in favor of the casino, I agree, but that's a separate problem."
That's not a separate problem at all. That was the whole point of my posts. It's not merely 'biased'... enforcement of this kind (oh no, you took advantage of a mistake the other guy made) is nonexistant against the house but has been repeatedly been used against players taking advantage of the house's mistakes, despite the fact that the house obviously has more resources and has an absolute advantage in the big picture.

Re:Glitches

[wienerschnizzel]

I still see no 'hacking' part in it

Consider a case where you have a senile cashier in your local grocery store and you find out that if you buy a certain combination of items and give him a 10 dollar bill, he'll confuse it with a 100 dollar bill and give you $92 back.

Would you call that hacking?

However, if you notice that the elderly clerk is not at the register and ask the manager to call him because you really like to do business with him personally, you might be conducting a fraud.

Re:Glitches

[AK Marc]

Fraud: playing a Vegas game where the offs aren't in the house's favor. It was possible for him to lose. He didn't cheat the odds, he used a "payout multiplier" within the game in a manner consistent with the description and directions of the game. The house has identified all such "tricks" it can find, and eliminated them all. If you use a fool-proof roulette winning play, you'll be quickly banned (And yes, there's one, presuming your pockets are deep enough). They advertise the game with as much "bonus/double/multiplier" in the title as they can get away with, then when someone does multiply his payoff, they order the government to lock him up.

We live in a free state, so long as you don't piss off anyone with money, then you are in jail for "hacking" if they used your key to start your car, or multiply a payout in the "payout multiplying" feature of a gaming machine.

Here's the actual link to the dropped charges

[rs1n]

Nothing in the summary links to the actual article in which the charges are noted as dismissed. Here's the relevant link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/video-poker-hacking-dismissed/

Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses...

[cyn1c77]

How many undiscovered glitches are there that cause the player to lose unfairly?

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Wattos]

How many undiscovered glitches are there that cause the player to lose unfairly?

These are called features ;)

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[starless]

Same as with candy bar machines.
They frequently fail to give you your candy bar, but they almost never accidentally give you 2 candy bars.
They're obviously engineered to "fail" in a way that benefits the "house"....

Re:legalize fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean Liberals?

Business always gets legal protection

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

It is illegal if David beats Goliath.

Re:Business always gets legal protection

[MightyMartian]

Are you kidding? It's illegal if David even figures out how to beat Goliath.

Re:Business always gets legal protection

[operagost]

In New Jersey, David's weapon is illegal to carry.*

* OK, I know there is a difference between a "sling" and a "slingshot", but I don't think New Jersey's legislators know what either one is, because the latter is actually illegal.

Is this for real?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgDsbjAYXcQ&feature=player_embedded#!

Is it true that the FBI deliberately refuses to allow recordings of any interviews in case their agents are caught lying? And that the notes they keep are the legal definition of the interview? So that if they 'tweak' the notes, you can't say you didn't say that, because that's lying to an FBI agent (the legal definition of the interview is the hand written notes, so you are now changing your story, a crime!), and you can't agree that you said that because it implicates you in crime. Catch 22.

If this is true, then the FBI are guilty of some serious criminal behavior. Why don't they record the interviews on an audio recording device ? Why are they afraid of an accurate recording?

Re:Is this for real?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you agree to such interviews without your lawyer present?

Charges officially dismissed?

[dgharmon]

"According to Wired, the two CFAA charges .. have been officially dismissed".

Where does it say that in the two links provided?

Re:Hey editors...

[Culture20]

Those newlines are there for a reason.

They would have been there, but someone couldn't be bothered to figure out what the new command for unix2dos was.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

Not many, I'd imagine. The house controls the odds of winning very carefully. This guy got extra winnings through a bug that caused the machine to pay out 10x what was on the screen. If there were an equivalent bug causing the machine to pay out 1/10th of the displayed winnings, you can bet your ass there'd be a lawsuit.

(not that I'm at all defending their attempts to screw this guy)

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[wvmarle]

They're engineered to be fail safe.

Nice try

[redmid17]

We strapped him down real good.

AT&T criminal negligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a few months ago we had this:
http://gawker.com/5559346/apples-worst-security-breach-114000-ipad-owners-exposed
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/weev/

AT&T had left the accounts of every iPad owner open, a group spotted it, reported it to Gawker, the Feds investigated, let AT&T off, and arrested the group and the lead was sentenced to 3.5 years.

So now you can't report security holes you find to the news because the FBI will arrest you for hacking.

Re:AT&T criminal negligence

[MobyDisk]

So now you can't report security holes you find to the news because the FBI will arrest you for hacking.

If the news outlet is your first disclosure, that's pretty irresponsible. That is too often the case - people looking for fame or fortune or publicity instead of doing the right thing. It is a different matter if the company blows you off.

We need a law that says all software companies must have a hotline for reporting security violations, and must respond within some period of time.

They ran a public CGI

[Anonymous Coward]

"Goatse Security obtained its data through a script on AT&T's website, accessible to anyone on the internet. When provided with an ICC-ID as part of an HTTP request, the script would return the associated email address, in what was apparently intended to be an AJAX-style response within a Web application."

The 'hack' was they visited a URL, and the FBI managed to convince a judge that visiting a URL is hacking. The FBI clearly cooperated in AT&T's coverup here, visiting a URL is not hacking. It appears that AT&T is too big to prosecute, so they shot the messenger.

The CFAA was misused and the limited technical knowledge of a judge abused, to get a prosecution that lets AT&T cover up their negligence in exposing private data publicly on the web. It also shields them from lawsuits, since they can point to the 'crime', and claim to be the 'victims'.

They dropped the CFAA charges in this case, but that means nothing, the FBI has long abused that law, it clearly needs to be fixed and the FBI clearly need to be reined in.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough, some vending machines are also "hackable" by pushing multiple selection buttons or pressing buttons in a certain sequence. In some cases they can be made to vend without putting money in first, and some other sequences may display the total money in the machine or activate the coin ejector. ("Jackpot!")

What about ATMs

[goombah99]

If an ATM starts spitting out double money, I don't think I'm entitled to keep it even though "I was just playing by it's rules". Now in this case it's a bit different I suppose since it is a game where I can win or lose. But the part that they are winning here is not really in the game but an artifact of the the way credits are miscounted. SO it's really analogous to the double-money ATM issue.

Re:What about ATMs

[Anonymous Coward]

> SO it's really analogous to the double-money ATM issue.

Except it is not. With the atm you signed a contract when you opened the bank account associated with your atm card. With the slot machine, you walked up to it and put your money in.

Re:What about ATMs

[aaaaaaargh!]

You can bet your ass that I'd keep the money.

Re:What about ATMs

[jedidiah]

> If an ATM starts spitting out double money, I don't think I'm entitled to keep it even though

Except it isn't an ATM that we're talking about. It's not even close.

Re:What about ATMs

[cayenne8]

So, it is illegal if a machine, but legal if a human?

I mean, if I go to a teller or cashier, and they miscount and give me too much change back for a transaction and I keep it, it isn't illegal is it?

If I know that said cashier/teller miscounts almost every time you give them a $20...and keep the change, are you saying that I could be arrested for taking advantage over someone elses stupidity?

Re:What about ATMs

[Anonymous Coward]

you can bet EULAs will be posted in all casinos in a hot second soon.

Re:What about ATMs

[stephanruby]

ATMs are not the same as a Poker machines.

This guy shouldn't be punished. He should be celebrated and be given multi-million dollars endorsement deals by the largest casinos (in addition to being defended by them against our overzealous government). Poker machines are marketed as puzzle boxes to be solved, or random boxes to be taken advantage of, if you're lucky or skillful enough.

Casinos will only benefit by his actions from the tens of thousands of people who will try to replicate what he did on their machines (of course, by now the flaw will have been fixed almost everywhere, but that won't stop many people from thinking that they may be able to find another similar flaw if they keep trying different variations and putting even more money in).

If Casinos are smart, they'll try to use this opportunity to reassure this particular segment of their customers, that what he did was fine and was within the rules, so that those patrons will try to do the same as he did (as hopeless as this endeavor may be for them).

Re:What about ATMs

[DriveDog]

Absolutely. The only reason for not taking advantage of the publicity that way would be that they have the same shortsightedness of the MAFIAA, not the MAFIA. Casinos must belong to a nastier bunch than they used to.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been lucky and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I've actually gotten two more often than I've been ripped off. (In fact, I only remember being ripped off once, at work, where I was reimbursed. But I remember several occasions where I've gotten two.)

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

In a casino? I'd imagine the customer would immediately point out the glitch to a staff and get reimbursed, gamblers can get really nasty when they lose unfairly. So I'd say zero undiscovered glitches that go against the gambler. There may be some that are yet not fixed but not undiscovered.

As to whether this particular case, going the opposite way, is a crime... Well every online game I've played says "bug-use is a bannable offense" so it's a grey area at best, but you still can't blame the casino from raising a stink.

Analogy time: let's say someone discovers that through some wild combination of reflections he can see your younger sister taking a shower off the shiny back of a brand new stop sign. So he videos the shower scene while legally standing on a public sidewalk, and puts in on YouTube. Illegal or a legit use of a bug?

Here's the new article at wired.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the new article at wired.com http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/video-poker-hacking-dismissed/

Wire fraud?

[Black Parrot]

They should have used wireless...

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[antifoidulus]

I doubt there are that many, largely because it would be pretty stupid to risk losing your license to operate a machine that, simply by the laws of probability, will almost make money. In the places where these things operate they usually have to undergo some pretty stringent testing to make sure the odds of winning are as close to "real" poker as possible. TFA even mentions them undergoing random spot inspections where they take a SHA-1 hash of the machine data and compare it with what is registered....

But when does it ever go the other way?

[foreverdisillusioned]

Sure, I'll accept that analogy. Now give me an example where anyone was charged with a felony after an ATM didn't give a customer as much money as was withdrawn from the account. Maybe a misdemenor? A successful lawsuit even?

Corporations make mistakes all the time and the vast majority of them are in their favor. And yet these people who have millions of dollars and trained specialists and lawyers at their disposal... for some reason they are held to a much lower standard of justice. Some kid writes a fairly benign virus, gets charged as an adult and goes to prison. Sony, a multibillion dollar transnational corporation with a legion of lawyers and technical experts at its disposal, designs a rootkit to install itself on the computers of tens of millions of their customers. Result? A few class action lawsuits that offered a refund of the purchase price or a coupon for a DRM'ed digital download version of the album.

I'm not anti-corporation, I just think they should be held to a higher standard than individuals instead of being given a free pass for doing what are otherwise considered to be felonies.

Re:But when does it ever go the other way?

[foreverdisillusioned]

sorry, I meant that to say "mistakes"

Re:But when does it ever go the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened in England a few years back. Of course it wasn't a bank official who ended up in jail, but rather the customer who was cheated out of his money.

Re:But when does it ever go the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

If an ATM shorts you money, and you bring it to the bank's attention then they will pay you the missing amount after they are able to verify your claim. The bank is not intentionally shorting you money, and the bank would very much like their ATM to work perfectly.

So, in this respect your comparisons are not equal. Further, if I used an ATM, and it happened to give me an extra $20 bill in a stack of 20s that I did not notice or count, then I would not end up in jail even if the matter was referred to the authorities.

If I figured out how to duplicate the error that led to an extra $20 being dispensed and then went around to various ATMs exploiting the flaw many times over, then I would end up being pursued by the authorities. I believe it is clear to see the difference between these two situations, and that the case in question clearly falls into the second category.

Re:But when does it ever go the other way?

[foreverdisillusioned]

As per my correction, I meant to say "mistakes", with the quotes. There have been multiple studies done on pricing mistakes in retail stores, phone billing errors, etc. and it's always the case that the large majority of them favor the company. From the news stories I've read about (including one here on slashdot a few years back), if a banking error happens in the favor of an account holder that account holder seems to be required, under threat of felony charges, to detect, report, and return the extra money promptly. But if it's the bank's error, you have to argue and argue and ask to speak to a manager and threaten to sue them (which *might* succeed but at best you'll recover. They're not going to give you punative damages for what the bank will insist was a "mistake".) If they notice the mistake and fail to inform you, nothing happens. The police certainly aren't going to arrest them. They're bankers. Bankers don't get arrested; poor people 'abusing' the banks do.

Re:But when does it ever go the other way?

[foreverdisillusioned]

and to once again emphasize: the bank is supposed to be staffed with professionals who are supposed to notice these things. They use technology specifically designed to catch mistakes. The customer has neither of these advantages, yet is for some reason held to a much higher standard when it comes to errors.

That was his point

[Anonymous Coward]

That's his point, don't go have a chat with the FBI, even if its not under oath, even if your not accused on anything, or a witness, because they have a policy of only keeping *their* hand written notes, and preventing a proper authentic recording.

The official policy is to prevent an accurate recording of an interview, and permitting only their inaccurate one.

You can say "I *wasn't* in that bar that evening", the FBI agent writes "I *was* in that bar that evening", if you deny saying what the FBI agent wrote, they'll try prosecuting for lying to a Federal agent, if you agree, they've successfully fabricated a fake piece of evidence that places you at the scene of a crime.

That would be perverting the course of justice, but the FBI rules ensure the evidence isn't there to prove it.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

On the subject of vending machines, I once discovered a flaw in the bill-reader of a vending machine that wouldn't take my bill. At first I thought it was a problem with the bill, so I tried smoothing it out and reinserting and after about five tries, noticed that the machine had credited me $2 without taking the bill. I took my item, got the change and met up with my friends.

The machine was in the basement of my dorm, and my friends were in the TV lounge one floor up. I told them the story about the machine - and we proceeded to play the vending machine much like the 'hackers' in the video poker case. We took turns inserting a dollar bill (it was always rejected) until the machine gave us the credit, bought the lowest-price item and collected $1.50 in change each time until we emptied the machine of change. We made off with about $17 in quarters apiece...

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking the SHA-1 hash does not detect BUGS that cause the PLAYER to lose money more than expected. How would you even know such a bug existed? Does QA go through mathematically checking everything under all circumstances (the answer is no: this guy found a case they didn't check). The question stands: how many CASINO-BIASED bugs remain?

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[AK Marc]

Analogy time: let's say someone discovers that through some wild combination of reflections he can see your younger sister taking a shower off the shiny back of a brand new stop sign. So he videos the shower scene while legally standing on a public sidewalk, and puts in on YouTube. Illegal or a legit use of a bug?

The looking would be legal. Video of a naked sub-18 posted without permission would likely be a crime, regardless of how it was obtained. If your younger sister is over 18, the only issue would be using someone's likeness without permission.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[antifoidulus]

Did you read the fucking comment, or just zoom in on a word and start mouthing off? The programs MUST go through a certification process that will catch most of the bugs, and the SHA-1 hash is to ensure that the code remains the same. So the benefit from creating casion-biased bugs is probably less than the potential cost of getting caught.... so yeah, when you hit that "reply" button in the future, actually read the fucking comment instead of just scanning for keywords, ok?

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[TFAFalcon]

There have been several cases where the machine displayed a much higher jackpot then what was then paid out.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/1828218/malfunction-costs-couple-11-million-slot-machine-jackpot
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/1638213/casino-denies-man-166-million-jackpot

And I don't think the 'winners' got anywhere with their lawsuits.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[egcagrac0]

he can see your younger sister taking a shower off the shiny back of a brand new stop sign. So he videos the shower scene while legally standing on a public sidewalk, and puts in on YouTube. Illegal or a legit use of a bug?

Legit use of a bug, but a violation of YouTube's Terms of Service ("you will not submit to the Service any Content or other material that is contrary to the YouTube Community Guidelines") and Community Guidelines ("YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content").

In the specific case of my younger sister, it's also horrific taste. She's quite unattractive. (Community guidelines: "YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos")

"Lucky shot" "justice"

[Errol backfiring]

"I guess we'll find out when we go to trial.'"

It is this "Lucky shot" kind of "justice" that makes the U.S. justice system a boring joke around the world. Off course there is always the possibility that you sue somebody for something that turns out not to be applicable, but just suing (and therefore financially draining) a victim just to see what he may be accused of is just criminal.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[91degrees]

I'd imagine this would be taken pretty seriously. Nevada regulated games pretty tightly, but the casinos want to provide an honest game. Their reputation matters, and they make a huge profit running honest games. A suggestion that they're cheating puts off a lot more honest players than they can win through a few glitches.

Not sure about that...

[SuperKendall]

I had a vending machine once display "WINNER" on the LCD, then it proceeded to give me my item and ALSO refund all the money I put into it!

It was very, very rare as used that machine quite often and it only happened once. But it does show the people that program them might easily have put in things that favor the person using the machine...

Re:Not sure about that...

[EETech1]

The coffee machine where I used to work would do that. I asked the vending machine guy about it, and he said it was adjustable, and set so every 50th cup was free. It was not a random 1 in 50 chance, simply every 50th cup.

There was a beat up old sticker by the bill validator that said "I will be giving away DRINKS ON THE HOUSE! Watch for the message, Listen for the beeps, IT MAY BE YOU"

Not everyone knew about it, so there was also about a 1 in 100 chance that their change would be left in the coin return:)

Cheers!

Re:Not sure about that...

[DriveDog]

Such was the case with the snack machine at the office. Every 100th person gets the item and their money returned. Hardly anyone knew about it. The first time it happened to me, I thought it was a defect. Then I noticed a scrolling message where the amount deposited would display that said "EVERY 100TH SELECTION NO COST" or some such, along with some other scrolling garbage. Nobody had bothered to read it because most of the time the other garbage was scrolling by, and only a few letters could be displayed, so there was never enough visible at a glance to understand. The price wasn't bad, either. But they changed vendors, and the new one had 1) high prices, 2) no "winners", and 3) a very solid mount on the floor and wall that kept you from getting your candy loose by jarring it when it hung up on the screw on the way out.

Voting and Casinos

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of pressing any buttons in the poker is to win or increase the winnings. No button pressing combination is thus any different from any other. And they should either all be illegal or not. Blaming these people for playing the game as it is, is just ridiculous. Casinos should be more careful about bugs and pay the bills in this case for their failure to do so.

Voting systems, now, I wish the same scrutiny was awarded to them.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Paradise Pete]

Yeah, fuck that poor slob who owns the vending machine. He can afford it.

So what was your limit? If the owner had forgotten to lock it would you have taken all the contents? How about if someone had accidentally left a crow bar nearby? Would you have pried open the machine? What's the line you won't cross?

Re: Of course, it's only illegal if the house lose

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to calm down and grow up.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Myopic]

Banning a lucky or plucky player is one thing but prosecuting him for a crime is a much different thing. I think banning is reasonable in most cases ('right to refuse service') but prosecutions should only happen when crimes are committed.

Isn't it hacking?

[91degrees]

Not sure I'm convinced that exploiting an obvious glitch isn't hacking. Especially when part of the process involves manipulating the casino into enabling the feature. It's pretty obvious that this isn't intended behaviour and it's a glitch.

Also not convinced that it is wire fraud. Seems an odd charge to apply.

Re:Isn't it hacking?

[Hatta]

Casino's entire reason for existance is to profit off of a glitch in the human brain.

Re:Isn't it hacking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I often go to a casino and "spend" $40-$100 playing the machines, just like I used to go to an arcade and spend $20 playing pinball. Casinos can be healthy fun as long as you don't go there with the aim of winning money at all cost.

Re:Isn't it hacking?

[Hatta]

And that's the glitch. Casinos are nothing but money sinks, and yet the human brain still perceives them as fun. There's no rational expectation that you will leave better off than you entered. There's essentially no skill involved in most games, so you don't even get to feel good for having played well. All there is is variable schedule reinforcement, and blinking lights.

Re:Isn't it hacking?

[Culture20]

There's essentially no skill involved in most games, so you don't even get to feel good for having played well. All there is is variable schedule reinforcement, and blinking lights.

Chutes and Ladders for adults. With booze and pretty women.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just at the casino the other day... The machines clearly state "all malfunctions void all pays and plays".

They gave the Feds their algorithm.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the only way to be sure.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an anecdote on vending machines. While going to school, I worked at a large drugstore (smaller than Walmart, larger than Walgreens). There was a soda vending machine outside. It was owned by some company that had lots of them in various places around the region. On coming to work opening the store on a Saturday we saw it had been broken into (it had a rather large steel bar across it and a huge lock, but they had been cut). The "money box" was taken. However the "change box" (where the machine keeps a certain amount of dimes, nickels, and a few quarters as change for sales) was still there and still full. The product (a bunch of various sodas) was still there too. We called the company and they said they would send someone on Monday. Two days later - with this machine open. They didn't care much about the stuff still in there. We figured this was stupid, so we removed all the soda (filled two shopping carts) and put it in the back room. We also held down the internal buttons that caused it to drop change and emptied the change box and put that in the back too. (As I recall I think I kept about a 6 pack of sodas for myself). We returned all that stuff to the company - and they didn't care. No thanks, no nothing. Apparently they CAN afford that. Because that kind of thing happens a lot. And they just write it off and move on.

but now he has to fight to get ou the Griffin Book

[Joe_Dragon]

but now he has to fight to get out the Griffin Book

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Paradise Pete]

A lot of vending machines are owned by small-time operators. Often semi-retired guys trying to make ends meet. You'll see them early in the morning at Costco loading up on items for that day's run. They split the revenue with the owner of the location of the machine. Not always, of course. The high-traffic locations get taken by the large operators, but there a lot of small-timers just trying to get by.

Sounds like you did a good thing. It's annoying that you cared more than the company, and some recognition and thanks would be nice, but then that's not why we do good things (at at least shouldn't be.)

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

if the house like the rest of us can resist greed , it dosnt need 'bugs' to make money it allready has features built into an honest game that punters allready accept to ensure i makes money over the long term.

Cellular companies

[phorm]

One that always comes to mind for me is cellular companies and billing errors. Strange how they can make the same error, every month, for possible a tens or hundreds of thousands, and the solution always seems to be just "oh sorry sir, we'll correct that on your next bill."

I had a co-worker who had a pretty tight budget, and remember that every single month he was on the phone correcting his cellular company's "mistakes." Of course, he was locked into a 3yr contract, so even after half a year or more mistakes he couldn't switch.

Meanwhile, the people that didn't watch their bills like a hawk get screwed, and the telco makes millions of illegitimate profit. Strange how those errors are 99.99% of the time in favour of the telco, and how they seem to always come back.

Who gets charged in court for that?

Broken Legs

[cgfsd]

I would worry more about being taken out into the back alley and having my legs broken. Casinos don't like people winning their money. He was lucky to only be arrested.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[tlhIngan]

Same as with candy bar machines.
They frequently fail to give you your candy bar, but they almost never accidentally give you 2 candy bars.
They're obviously engineered to "fail" in a way that benefits the "house"....

Depends on the machine. At one place, two of the 5 had special sensors that ensured something fell down into the chute (I think the machines called it "seeing eye" or something). It's just a little optical sensor whose beam gets broken by the item.

Once, it DID fail on me - the item was still stuck on the loop. The machine detected this and spun it around again, so I ended up with two.

I noticed that those machines were also better engineered - one item common to all had a habit of falling the wrong way and getting wedged in the chute such that the door was stuck shut. (or get caught on a lip in the chute) The seeing eye machines didn't have lips that could catch the item nor did the item ever fall the wrong way to get stuck - they were engineers to prevent the item from flipping around and tended to have the items slide down rather than tumble.

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The poker game was programmed such that a certain set of button pushes would result in a win. Why is using the program as it was programmed a crime?

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, that's not actual true -- most vending machines dispense one item per operation by turning an auger 1 revolution -- if the item snags, 1 further revolution will generally unsnag the first item and drop the second, getting the next guy 2 candy bars. It's pretty much zero-sum unless one slot on the auger isn't filled (in which case, don't buy that item when the empty slot comes up!) or the machine thinks an auger was fully refilled when it was partially refilled, and lets you keep purchasing from it after it has already dropped all its contents (again, don't do that!).

Now, the money processing side can be bad (occasionally eating a dollar bill or failing to dispense change) but you said "fail to give you your candy bar" which I assume refers to the vending side...

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[hey!]

That was my thought when I read the summary, but then I read the article.

The glitch wasn't one that caused the machine to lose; it was one that allowed the player to manipulate the machine into paying out the same jackpot *twice*. Compounding that, it could be made to pay out that jackpot at odds higher than the player actually faced the first time around.

Let's look at this by analogy. Suppose there was a real card game offered by the casino, and this game had a flaw in it; that flaw consists of a no-lose strategy. There'd be nothing immoral about a player noticing that strategy and exploiting it to win. That's the impression of the software glitch the summary gives. In fact the glitch works more like this: suppose the player notices that when the employee hands out winning chips, he leaves a drawer full of chips open where anyone coming along could grab them. The player then plays until he wins, pockets his winnings, then walks around to the other side of the table and stuffs a bunch of chips that don't belong to him into his pocket.

Wire Fraud? Computer Hacking? Hardly!

[Toad-san]

Suppose, just suppose, you discover that if you tap three times on the side of an old-fashioned one-armed bandit, at a specific place and a specific speed, it pays off!

So you do this ten thousand times, win ten thousand dollars. And the casino finds out.

What's the charge? Wire fraud?

Nooo .. they'll grit their teeth, buy you a drink, and yank every damned one of those machines offline until they get the bug fixed.

So what's different now with this software glitch? And why blame the clever guy who discovered it?

Let the casinos take their hits and learn their lessons. This is NOT criminal, IMHO.

Re:God says...

[xevioso]

Ooh, I love fantasy! Here's a good one for you!

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
as wind in the morning. War was kindled.
There Théoden fell, Thengling mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
int he Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host. Harding and Guthláf,
Dúnhere and Déorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,
Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset;
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

I wonder...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This bug reminds me of one in Baldur's Gate -- to activate a scroll or item or something your characrer normally couldn't, pause the game, go into the backpack and click on an item to activate it, then swap its spot with the item you really wanted to activate.

On pressing go, the lockout check had already been performed, but the swapped item activates.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[tech.kyle]

In my short experience of working at a casino as a slot attendant, we've had malfunctions (eg: play button stuck down) that has caused the patron to lose their money. In that case we verify how much they started with and give them a ticket for the original amount (this is customer service, not a legal requirement). Anyone could tell you that if they hit a jackpot (anything above $2,000 or $3,000, can't remember which) while the machine was malfunctioning (as long as it was a legitimate play and not an error), they're not going to want their original credits back. Since it was a malfunction that didn't affect the outcome of the plays, I'm sure the casino would have honored that win. Casinos (or more specifically, the vendors casinos use) will find and fix glitches not only because they still have laws to follow, but also because it isn't hard for them to take all your money legally.

On top of that, most casinos have all plays computed on a server in a back room. Unless you're in Vegas (class 1 machines, iirc), plays are generally not run on the machine you're sitting at. They're just clients that show you what the outcome on the server was. Even if the machine were to somehow have some kind of exploitable glitch, it would not sync up with the server.

Finally, EVERY machine has a disclaimer that says "Malfunction voids all plays and pays". This is the be-all and end-all.

tl;dr: Casinos don't need glitches to take your money.

Re:legalize fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a stencil for anyone else who wants to play:

Don't you mean <political alignment I don't like>?

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[box4831]

In school, we had a vending machine with a glitch where if you put in a quarter then unplugged/plugged in the machine, it would power up with a dollar credit. The items in the machine all cost 75 cents, so a quarter would come back out. The students would keep this quarter on top of the machine for anyone to use (we called it the bitch quarter). It was cleaned out in a matter of days. It was refilled once, then they noticed that it was emptied again with no money in it so they removed the machine.

Re:God says...

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome response. And a perfect example of why I've never gotten through either the bible or any Tolkien book. Blech.

Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses

[Anonymous Coward]

And remember, by violating YouTube's terms of service you too can be prosecuted under the CFAA.

Yes. It was still a game of chance

[foreverdisillusioned]

As I said elsewhere, if I understand the bug correctly it's worth noting that it was still technically possible for him to lose. If he lost every game he would walk away with nothing but empty pockets. Therefore the fundamental nature of game wasn't changed--it was still gambling, but with the odds/payouts dramatically changed.

Re:Yes. It was still a game of chance

[AK Marc]

And the wording of the game is consistent with his play. It only worked on machines with a double-payout multiplier, and he played to the multiplier. It just happened that he could multiply a previous payout if he didn't already cash it out. That's what it's supposed to do, right?