Re:Masterminding the largest lottery scam in American history
by sctb on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:51PM
(#16996629)
We've updated the title to a representative phrase from the article, but we're happy to update it again if someone can suggest something better!
Re:Masterminding the largest lottery scam in American history
by emodendroket on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:59PM
(#16996708)
The article suggests there was an audit that he had to get past, at least.
> From Tipton’s point of view, it was complicated. He had done something to see if he could do it. To his surprise, it worked. He said he inserted that code only once; after the code was approved by Gaming Laboratories International, machines containing it were shipped all over the country.
Re:Masterminding the largest lottery scam in American history
by astura on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:50PM
(#16997666)
What good is an "audit" if it doesn't even catch the simplest of simple malicious code?
Re:Masterminding the largest lottery scam in American history
by jwilk on Friday May 04, 2018 @04:52PM
(#16998215)
The auditors did only this:
- ran the RNG through statistical tests (which of course passed flawlessly)
- audited the source code (but the backdoor was in binaries…)
Source: DEFCON presentation linked elsewhere in comments.
The title is "The Man Who Cracked the Lottery" but it's not about someone actually cracking the lottery, that is, figuring out how to mathematically win the lottery or figuring out existing flaws; its just about straight up insider fraud. A better title is "The Man Who Rigged the Lottery." Or the TL;DR version: "Man Inserted Logic Bomb Into Lottery Draw Code Because There Was No Controls To Stop Him."
Its still somewhat of an interesting read but the title really ruined it for me; I was expecting an entirely different story.
Examples of people actually cracking the lottery/gambling site:
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winner...
https://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/616221/How-We-Lea...