Avi Rubin Comments on Internet Security and Online Poker

When I sat down earlier today with Avi Rubin here on the main floor at the 2014 World Series of Poker, he told me something shocking.

Internet banking as we know and practice it is dead — or very soon will be — given the way technology works and the advancements, hackers continue to make in stealing all of our secrets.  But personal banking and finance are only the tip of a larger and dirtier iceberg that’s floating out there.  We might as well be passengers on the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

Fact is, everything we do online is vulnerable to attack and exposure, which should really be alarming right now given the current political climate, especially to those who are engaged in the fight to legalize online poker.

Avi Rubin’s credentials in this arena are impeccable.  Poker is extraordinarily lucky to have him as a potential resource working on our side.  We should use him to develop ways to counter the bad guys.  He’s even willing to help us out simply for his deep love of the game, combined with a fundamental belief that online poker sites must be pressed to go the distance to protect players at all times, in all games.

Rubin’s conclusions and bold ideas merit our attention.  Even though we may not always like what we read, and some of the conclusions he’s reached will be troubling, we are much better off working with him in the long run.  We must ally ourselves with Rubin and those who have his expertise (who are few), rather than denying that security breeches remain a serious issue.  Here we have one of the world’s foremost experts in this area.  So, let’s take advantage of him and his generosity.

Accordingly, I encourage those in the poker industry to call upon Rubin to work with us.  At the very least, his most recent articles deserve serious attention.

Pay particular note to PAGE 3 of the paper, “Securing Online Poker.”

Abstract:

As an avid poker player, I enjoyed playing low-stakes cash games and low buy-in tournaments on Full Tilt Poker before Black Friday.  However, as a Computer Scientist specializing in network and software security, I would never play poker online for any significant stakes, due to security concerns around malware and malicious remote access tools.  In this article, I describe a new scheme that is easy to adopt, requires no new hardware or user training, and which I believe eliminates the primary threat of malware in online poker.  Under my scheme, implemented properly, I would be comfortable playing poker online for whatever stakes my bankroll would allow.

AVI RUBIN’S HOMEPAGE

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ENGINEERING (“HOLD’EM OR FOLD’EM“)

PAPER:  SECURING ONLINE POKER

A PREVIOUS ARTICLE I WROTE ON RUBIN:  “AVI RUBIN’S FANTASY“

TAG: Avi Rubin Johns Hopkins University