Anarchy Poker is featuring a fascinating riff on Pokerbot strategy development. Here are the two main objectives of their Pokerbot in the making.
The bot must be hard to detect for the poker rooms
We decided that impossible to detect was to much to ask for and it wasn’t really necessary. It would only take time from the more pressing developement.
The bot must be hard to detect for poker players
This is similar to the above but as we knew since before that players can see stuff the operator can’t and operaters see stuff players don’t we wanted to be clear about it.
Critical Security forum has a great thread on breaking PKR and Betfair poker clients. Here is an amusing comment in the thread on magic numbers in cryptographic algorithms.
The easy way is to search for the magic numbers… all common crypotographic algorithms use magic numbers (built in cleverly chosen constants) for seeding or influencing rounds. Searching for these leads you directly to the encryption/decryption routines without having to follow the buffers ; )
A simple magic numbers search will tell you which of the apps files implements crypto, what types of crypto are available to the app, and most importantly… will show you where the routines are. Breakpoint the magic numbers and you’re going to find the routine. For example, lets say you want to find a hash routine like MD5 or SHA when the app uses a static implementation… just search the binaries and find the ones containing the published ’round constants’, set a break on read and you’re going to wake up right in the middle of the crypto.
Tags: Betfair poker client, codebreaking poker clients, cryptographic algorithms, PKR poker client, pokerbot development, stealth pokerbot
