1. Russian Slot Cheats Poker
2. Russian Slot Cheats Coins

The flaws in smart contracts and the security corner round out the news. Read on...

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From Russia With Cheats Russia has been a hotbed of slots-related malfeasance since 2009, when the country outlawed virtually all gambling. (Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time. The Russian Treasure slot machine is dedicated to the culture of Russia. Players can immerse themselves in Russian flair using 5 reels with 5 fixed paylines. For each spin, the slot machine can deliver winnings with multipliers up to 5000. The device has an additional gainful feature in the form of a. Slot machines installed with non-complex RNGs can be beaten by high-tech devices and prediction algorithms.

Reverse-engineering a 45-year old ALU.This post from Ken Shirriff explains how the ALU worked in Intel’s first 8-bit microprocessor, the 8008. If you don’t know why that matters, “the 8008 is historically important because it essentially started the microprocessor revolution and is the ancestor of the x86 processor family that you are probably using right now.”

Understanding htop. htop is a powerful process monitor that reveals much more data about a machine’s performance than regular top. Here’s a great overview that explains what all the fields, graphs, and related stuff means.

“Smart Contracts” are neither?This post from Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker explains how smart contracts, as used in some blockchain-based systems, aren’t really smart and aren’t really contracts.

Russian Slot Cheats Poker

Have $55? This tool will destroy many devices just by plugging it in. The “USB Killer” device does what it says on the tin, permanently damaging the USB port or entire device in many pieces of hardware. It does this by sucking power from the device, storing it in a series of onboard capacitors, then barfing a giant voltage spike across the USB/Lightning port of the target device, causing it to have a bad day. Maybe Apple’s courage in removing ports was just a brilliant bit of foresight.

A hole in the cloud. Another great 33C3 talk was this series of talks discussing how memory deduplication in virtual machines can be exploited. The three methods (CAIN, CAIN+Rowhammer, and Flip Feng Shui) combine to enable things like SSH login, browser exploits, and a compromise of the software update process.

Russian Slot Cheats Coins

Cheating a slot machine through the power of random numbers. Using a cell phone app to exploit the PRNG in a slot machine lead to huge casino losses. Read more in this piece from Wired. How much can you exploit the machines for? Try “upwards of $250,000 in a single week.”

The people responsible for sending the missile warning have been sacked. An alerting system test at Spangadhlem Air Base in Germany probably lead to much freaking-out, as a message was sent telling airmen that a missile was inbound to the base and to seek shelter immediately. Eight minutes later, the all clear was sent.

“Web Bluetooth” - two words I never wanted to see together. Chrome version 56 has added support for the Web Bluetooth API, opening up your Bluetooth devices to fun and exciting exploits from the Internet… I mean, opening up your Bluetooth devices to interact with websites for things like data exchange or software updates. Ostensibly, you must affirmatively opt-in before any data about your Bluetooth devices is shared with the website, but we’ll see how well that actually is implemented.

In the security corner: websites continue to find ways to fingerprint users, that doll might be a spy, and new Mac malware comes from Russia, with love:

• In news I’m certain surprised absolutely nobody, researchers have developed a technique to track users even if they use multiple browsers. As you might guess if you’re familiar with fingerprinting techniques, it relies primarily on WebGL tasks, most of which execute in very similar ways across browsers. According to the researchers, they are able to successfully fingerprint over 99% of users.
• The “My Friend Cayla” doll was classified by the German government as an illegal espionage apparatus, because it contains a microphone and is disguised as another object. The Germans, for some reason, are very wary of anything that could conceivably be used for surveillance. Access to the doll is, of course, not very secure, contributing to the problem.
• Xagent malware for the Mac has been blamed on APT28, the same Russian hacking group allegedly responsible for the DNC leaks in the 2016 election. Xagent has many capabilities and uses domains that look like Apple domains to hide their C&C services. Of course, attributing malware to any group is more art than science, but this is still noteworthy because of how strong this malware is.

As a programming note, we won’t produce a rundown next week. Look for the next one on Monday, March 6. Further, we’re continuing to experiment with the best way to deliver this content. Look for video features to join this rundown soon. If you have feedback, or think there’s something I should cover next time, leave a comment!

Cover photo: A slot machine interface. Note: the machine pictured is not made by the manufacturer of the machines that were exploited in the slot machine story. It's just a flashy pic of a slot machine. Credit: Bloomberg / Getty

A gang of alleged Russian mobsters was charged this week for participating in a massive racketeering scam, with alleged crimes including murder-for-hire conspiracy, hacking into casino slot machines, plotting robberies, running illegal gambling parlors, selling narcotics and, somehow, stealing and smuggling 10,000 pounds of chocolate treats. One of these doesn't seem quite like the others, but, hey, it's important to mix things up or you can get burned out on a life of crime.

Yesterday, Manhattan's Federal District Court unsealed the immense indictment—31 people are named in it, the majority of whom hail from Russia and Ukraine but currently live in New York, New Jersey and Florida. The indictment names Razhden Shulaya, 40, of New Jersey and Zurab Dzhanashvili, 37, of Brooklyn, as ringleaders, claiming the duo helped spearhead an illicit poker operation in Brighton Beach; the aforementioned murder-for-hire attempt; and the plot to hack into electronic slot machines at casinos in Philadelphia and Atlantic City to predict their win percentages.

The gang is also charged with attempting to get a woman to seduce a man in Atlantic City, then knock him out with chloroform to rob him. They're also accused of attempting to create an 'after-hours' nightclub at which they could sell drugs. Then, of course, there's the smuggling—the defendants are charged with transporting and selling cases of untaxed cigarettes, but more interestingly, they're accused of stealing a cargo shipment containing about 10,000 pounds of 'chocolate confections.'

The indictment is apparently one of the first federal racketeering charges brought against a Russian 'vor,' or mob boss—in this case, Shulaya. It's also noteworthy that one of the group's biggest charges involved computer hacking—'Using computers is second nature to many of these groups,' Mark Galeotti, a Russian crime specialist at the Institute of International Relations Prague in the Czech Republic, told the Times. 'Yes, there are tattooed thugs around. But actually the kind of Russian gangster one sees in America is more likely to be a fraudster, a hacker or semi-criminal businessman.'

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