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Investigation Into Security Director Who Hacked the Lottery Expands (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader sends the latest update on Eddie Tipton, the man who worked for the Multi-State Lottery Association who was convicted of rigging a lottery game so he could win a $14 million jackpot. BGR reports: "Not too long ago, Eddie Tipton was convicted of hacking into the Multi-State Lottery Association's computer system in order to rig a nearly $17 million jackpot in Iowa. Now comes word that an investigation into Tipton's hacking activities is expanding to include a number of other states. Thus far, lottery officials from Colorado, Wisconsin and Oklahoma have indicated that Tipton may have also gamed lottery jackpots in their respective states. What makes this saga all the more interesting is that Tipton actually used to work at the Multi-State Lottery Association as a security director. In that capacity, Tipton allegedly installed a rootkit onto his company's computer system that influenced the manner in which 'random' numbers were generated. As a result, Tipton was able to calculate and gain access to winning lotto numbers before their public unveiling. With the numbers in tow, authorities claim that Tipton would reveal the winning numbers to friends who would then buy 'winning' lotto tickets and then collect on big paydays."
There are states that use a computer to pick their numbers and not balls pushed out by a machine?
The numbers in this particular lottery are drawn by computer. Other games use balls drawn on live TV. Even with the live drawing method, fraud is possible.
Why would you think lotteries are rigged?
Does this open the hacked lottery to class action lawsuits by people who played the rigged lottery but had no chance of winning?
Every state that has one uses it to cut taxes on the rich instead of adding to Education budgets (seriously, there's a John Oliver video over on youtube that explains it). It's addictive gambling that often drains the last few dollars from the poor and worse it gives the lower class a false feeling of hope that discourages them from demanding better living conditions. It encourages the downtrodden to think of luck as a skill you work at and view their failure to win as a personal failure. Lotteries are one of the most vile tools for controlling the working class ever devised. How is it nobody but one guy on youtube ever points this out?
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The Lottery is a hidden Tax on the Poor.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What are you talking about? Powerball is run by the Multi State Lottery Association, which is owned and operated by the member state lotteries. 'A European Group' has nothing to do with it, and never has. And CA, 'with its massive number of citizens', didn't even carry Power Ball until April 2013.
If a computer picks the numbers, it can be rigged.
Better would be to come up with an equation that would take a dynamic natural phenomenon, such as so,e kind solar measurement.or some other naturally occurring and dynamic process in nature, and use that. Or, at the very least have the seed for the random number generator taken from a natural process
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is it too late to 'Friend' this guy on Facebook?
B32!
Alternatively, they can just predict /dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up. /dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered. /dev/urandom - which is the *unblocked* one. It will always spits out random numbers, no matter what the current state of the entropy pool is. If gets too low, you're basically just having a CPRNG (a cryptographic *pseudo*-random number generator). It might look random, but if you collect enough data, you can guess the internal state of the generator and predict the next number.
(Because of these pauses, it might be a performance bottleneck), that's why most implementations also offer...
The problem is that, for performance reason, lots of people tend to use the second one, even for situation where this is a bad idea. Like generating the random numbers needed for a cryptographic key.
See Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of
Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices
Linux is one of the unix-like system that implements these kind of split random/urandom duality.
Linux is also incredibly popular on embed device.
Embed devices tend to have *not that much* sources of entropy (e.g.: no harddrive and input devices with chaotic timing)
Gathering enough entropy for the critical process would take time.
But several implementation use urandom (on the grounds that nobody wants to wait 30 minute after turning an appliance now. They want to push the button and the device imediatly tunring on and being operationnal).
Which is a BAD IDEA(tm) for cryptography.
The good idea would have been: defer the generation of keys as late as possible, e.g.: right before they are actually needed for the first time. By then some entropy (network timings, etc...) could have been generated.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You could easily use post production effects to replace the surface of the balls with the white lettering of the numbers. hey could simply be unmarked balls, then when one gets selected, the number is added. They already use that technology to make adverts multi-lingual by replacing any posters or text in the scene.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Im sure glad nothing like this would ever happen to voting machines
Not always,
https://news.google.com/newspa...
old but still very relevant.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I work retail and operated a lottery machine. I've seen all types of people, some play for fun but most play with a seriousness that one would for working a job. A lot of folks have their "system" and they stick to it. Never mind that they lose 99 times that 100th time that they won means their system is flawless. And then there are the people who think the lotto is a scam, but play anyway. I liken these folk to people who go to a used car dealer who sells but somehow will slip up an sell a good car.
Difference is Stewart knows what's getting laughs from pandering to the audience and what you need to do to get laughs from parodying.
He goes up against his own preconceptions when constructing a joke.
Oliver follows his own preconceptions.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Why would you think lotteries are rigged?
Why would you think they are not?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
it's the poor and disadvantaged... We're taking advantage of people who are really vulnerable already. Hell, some of them might know the odds but can't help themselves. Gambling is addictive...
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So your friend worked for lottery security and he told you the numbers and that's how you won the lottery...
Ummm... what? I did win the lottery. And my friend did tell me the numbers. But he told me BEFORE the numbers were picked.
Yeah, that's what we are saying
So why am I on trial.
Because your friend worked for lottery security and he told you the numbers and that's how you won the lottery...
Oh, boy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's only a tax on the stupid if you don't know what a tax is. Taxes are imposed.
The Turing test cuts both ways
This why, in the UK, we have an independent adjudicator. - Of course he could be bribed...