UB and Absolute Poker Move To Reassure Customers Over Security Concern
May 11, 2010 6:11 amThe Cereus Network has been pulling out all the stops to fix a leak in their weak encryption method, after a poker tracking site demonstrated how it was possible to see a player’s holecards by hacking their Internet connection.
The Cereus Network was formed after top poker cardrooms UB and Absolute Poker merged to form one of the largest poker network in the world, all under the control of owners Tokwiro Enterprises.
However, between 2004 and 2008 UB and Absolute Poker were rocked by a series of cheating scandals when super-users made millions by being able to access opponent’s hole-card information. Since then Tokwiro Enterprises have assured customers that increased state of the art security measures had been put in place to prevent such an occurrence happening again.
Now last Thursday’s revelation by PTR (Poker Table Ratings) that the Cereus Network’s XOR” based encryption method was significantly worse than the industry standard SSL method and was open to exploitation, has threatened to unerve the network’s customers once again.
Currently, it is acknowledged that exploiting the potential flaw in the system would necessarily have had to be a complicated affair and that investigations so far have not unearthed any evidence that any cheating actually took place.
Although the company initially considered closing the Cereus Network temporarily, they have now managed instead to put in place a new solution and have moved to assure their customers that there is no longer anything for them to be concerned about.
Commenting on the incident, the chief operating officer of Tokwiro Enterprises, Paul Leggett said:
“PTR (Poker Table Ratings) was able to crack our local encryption method … I would also like to say that I am very embarrassed and upset that this issue was not caught by our internal staff or through the countless audits we’ve been through this year and last year.”