I Cheated At Poker By Hacking A Casino Card Shuffling Machine

WIRED

To win big at Texas Hold-Em, a player needs considerable skill, no small amount of luck...and it wouldn't hurt to know what every other player is holding, either. WIRED's Andy Greenberg teams up with casino cheating expert Sal Piacente and hacker/researcher Joseph Tartaro to exploit an automatic card shuffler used in casinos everywhere to engineer a big win. This is Hacklab: I Cheated At Poker By Hacking A Casino Card Shuffling Machine.  Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey Director of Photography: Charlie Jordan Editor: A.J. Schultz Poker Players: Dee Piacente; Elle Drane; Fernando Fernandez Host: Andy Greenberg Experts: Sal Piacente; Joseph Tartaro Writers: Andy Greenberg; Lisandro Perez-Rey Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Brandon White  Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Camera Operator: Jake Kinney Gaffer: Nicholas Villafuerte Sound Mixer: Rado Stefanov Production Assistant: Abby Devine  Assistant Editor: Britt Bernstein Card Designer: Erica Schultz

Transcript

00:00To win big in poker, you need skill, luck, and it helps if you somehow know the cards

00:04in every other player's hands.

00:06I'm a terrible poker player, but I teamed up with this casino cheating expert and this

00:10hacker who uncovered a high-tech way to digitally rig this common card shuffling machine used

00:15in casinos across the U.S.

00:17Together we designed a scheme to hack a card shuffling machine.

00:20Let's make some money.

00:21I'm in.

00:22And win big in Vegas.

00:23That's a crazy little hand.

00:25I'm Andy Greenberg.

00:26I investigate the strange, dark, and subversive sides of technology for Wired.

00:30This is Hack Lab.

00:31I cheated at poker by hacking a casino card shuffling machine.

00:36This experiment takes me to Las Vegas, Nevada for DEFCON, America's biggest hacker conference.

00:41I'm meeting Joseph Tartaro, a researcher and consultant with the security firm IO-Active.

00:45Joseph.

00:46Hey, Andy.

00:47How's it going?

00:48Two years ago, I wrote a story for Wired about Joseph's technique for hacking card shovelers

00:51to take full control over a poker game for perfect, undetectable cheating in a casino

00:56environment.

00:57And in a moment, I'll put his technique to the test by trying to cheat these unsuspecting

01:01poker players in a real game of Texas Hold'em.

01:04But first, I want to understand how the shuffler works.

01:07This is the Deckmate 2 card shuffler that you hacked two years ago.

01:11This is the most popular card shuffler.

01:13You're going to see it in every major poker room that's even used in the World Series of

01:16Poker.

01:17It actually sits flush.

01:18This is what's next to your knees under the table.

01:20How does the Deckmate 2 work internally?

01:23Is it actually the same way that I would take a deck and riffle, shuffle it like this?

01:28Is it doing that mechanically inside?

01:30No, actually it has 20, 23, or 26 different shelves and it will generate a random number.

01:35So we'll say, okay, this first card I'm going to process, I'm going to put that in position

01:39three.

01:40The next one, I'm going to put that in position 12, and it will eventually just produce

01:43a deck.

01:44It's really used to make sure that the casino just gets more hands an hour.

01:48Basically the shuffler has the capability to completely sort a deck in order, ace to king

01:52every suit.

01:53Let me show you.

01:54Set the door open here.

01:57And now we wait.

02:00And the dealer just pulls the deck out of this little container at the top.

02:04Correct.

02:05There's your deck.

02:06Yeah, here we go.

02:09Perfectly consecutive now.

02:10So obviously if the shuffler can order the whole deck as a kind of feature that it shows

02:16you by default, then that means that if you can hack it, you can reorder the deck and

02:21fully control the placement of every card, right?

02:22Yeah, 100%.

02:23I actually have a fun hand that I can show you from James Bond's Casino Royale.

02:27Have you seen the movie Casino Royale?

02:32I have.

02:33In this scenario, Joseph was able to hack the deckmate's code so that it would reorder the

02:37deck, so that the dealer would deal out exactly the hands from the poker game in that movie

02:41scene.

02:42I will be James Bond in this scenario.

02:44So here we go.

02:46The villain in the movie draws a full house, just like Joseph.

02:50Ace is full of sixes.

02:51The bond has a straight flush.

02:54Correct.

02:55And Joseph had hacked the shuffler to give me that same winning hand.

02:58You did this with code alone.

03:00Yes.

03:01In Texas Hold'em, like any kind of poker, the winner is determined by who has the best

03:05hand.

03:06Three of a kind beats two pair, or a straight flush beats a straight.

03:08If a player can control the deck order, they can make sure that they get the best hand

03:12every time.

03:13But there's one big challenge to that approach to cheating.

03:16So wouldn't cutting the deck ruin this whole perfect reordering you've done?

03:19Yeah, exactly.

03:20No, you spotted it.

03:21I did not cut the deck here.

03:22So what if the deck is cut?

03:23What do you do then?

03:24I actually have an interesting scenario for you.

03:26I have a mathematically solved deck.

03:28So if we have four players at the table, no matter what, the person sitting at the dealer

03:32button will always win.

03:33Cool.

03:34Okay, let's see that.

03:38Go ahead and give you the dealer button.

03:40So the way this works is a computer program was written to try to solve an order of a deck

03:45that no matter where a dealer would cut it, that position would always win.

03:49It's a bit counterintuitive, but mathematicians have determined a way to order a deck so that

03:53a specific person at the table will have the winning hand every time, even if the deck

03:57is cut, so long as you know where at the table they're going to be sitting.

04:00It's surprising that's possible.

04:01So I'm going to go ahead and cut the deck, and we're going to deal.

04:06That solved deck trick meant Joseph had actually reprogrammed the shuffler to order all the cards

04:11such that no matter where the deck is cut, I would have the best hand.

04:14In this case, two pair.

04:15Queens of nine, so your two pair beats mine.

04:18So this does solve the problem of cutting the deck, but it does seem like if you kept doing that

04:22then players would get suspicious, like why does this guy keep winning?

04:25Why does he keep having the best hands?

04:26Yeah, 100%, they would start asking questions.

04:28There's a much better way we can cheat.

04:30The way the sorting works is there's actually a camera inside the shuffler and it will read

04:34the cards.

04:35And it's kind of funny because it's put in there for security purposes so that if somebody

04:39were to remove an ace of spades and add another seven of diamonds, it would alert the dealer.

04:44But in this case, we're actually going to take advantage that there's a camera in there to cheat.

04:48So this would be our cheating strategy.

04:52Take advantage of the incredible fact that there's a camera inside the shuffler.

04:56Hack the machine to get access to that camera.

04:58Learn the exact deck order and send it via Bluetooth to a phone app.

05:02After all, the stealthiest way to win in poker is not to have the best hand.

05:05It's simply to know whether or not you have the best hand so you can bet or fold accordingly.

05:10What was it that led you to want to hack the Deckmate 2 in the first place?

05:14It really actually started with a really suspicious hand in televised poker that just had a lot

05:19of people talking about it.

05:20In September of 2022, a scandal blew up the world of high-stakes live-streamed poker.

05:25In a hand at Los Angeles' Hustler Casino Live, a relative novice holding nothing but a jack

05:30of clubs and a four of hearts successfully called the bluff of a veteran player.

05:34No player could possibly have thought that her weak hand would be good enough to call a bluff,

05:37thousands of outraged poker players argued, unless the person holding it had some extra knowledge

05:42that her opponent's hand was even worse.

05:45In other words, she must have been cheating, which she denied.

05:48The casino responded with an investigation which concluded that there had been no evidence

05:52of foul play.

05:53But one little detail in the report about the card shuffler stuck out to Joseph.

05:57As specifically said, it could not be compromised.

06:00And in my world, when people start saying things are unhackable or very difficult to do,

06:05well, to us, that's a bait to prove them wrong.

06:08Joseph and a couple of colleagues spent months reverse engineering the shuffler.

06:12They bought their own Deckmate 2 for testing from a second-hand seller.

06:15And the researchers' hacking technique took advantage of how Deckmate shufflers are designed

06:19to prevent their code from being altered.

06:21The machine's firmware is designed to take a hash of its code on startup,

06:25a mathematical function that converts the code into a unique string of characters,

06:29and then checks whether that string is different from the known hash value of the unaltered code.

06:34But Joseph and his collaborators found that they could simply change that hash value too,

06:38so that the hash of the altered code matches and no change is detected.

06:42Even then, though, a poker-cheating hacker would still need a way to get access to a shuffler's internals

06:47to install their code.

06:48Joseph found one, the USB port.

06:50It turns out that the Deckmate 2 has a USB port that often sits exposed under the table.

06:55So as long as we're able to reach under and plug this little device into the USB port, we're golden.

07:00So how does this work?

07:01So essentially this is just a miniature computer.

07:03And what it will do is we'll plug it into the machine and it will compromise it, rewrite the code,

07:07and start communicating with the cell phone.

07:09So the way we do that is right here on the back of the shuffler is the USB port.

07:16So we could either walk up to a live game and plug the device in, or if we had access to the device before any player showed up,

07:23we could even hide it inside internally.

07:25All we have to do is reach down and plug this thing in.

07:28The shuffler is going to actually be flush with the table, and the port's going to be down by your knee.

07:32In a poker room, there's so much going on, people changing seats, so it's really common to drop some chips or something,

07:37reach down, and just plug something in.

07:39I chose to use this device, but we could even use a malicious Android phone and just plug a phone in and say we're charging it.

07:46So you can charge your phone in that port in the middle of a game?

07:49Yeah, people in poker tournaments will regularly plug their phones into casino equipment.

07:54So then how does it help you cheat?

07:55This device has a Bluetooth module, and it will wirelessly connect to this phone.

08:00And every time a deck gets shuffled, it will get the exact order from the camera and send it to me.

08:06So then you know the order after the deck has been shuffled, but doesn't it get cut again?

08:09Actually, the app solves that problem.

08:11Once we receive our hand, we can look at it, enter the details we need, and we'll know the order.

08:16In other words, Joseph's app has a way around the problem of a dealer cutting the deck.

08:20The cheater or their partner can enter into the app the two cards in their hands.

08:24With just the knowledge of those cards, the app can determine where in the deck the dealer has cut to.

08:28That's enough for the app to tell the cheater every hand that the players will end up with after all the cards are dealt.

08:33A player messing with their phone in the middle of a game is often against casino rules.

08:37So we decided to try a scheme where Joseph looks at his two cards and then folds.

08:42Once he's out of the game, he's allowed to pick up his phone, and then he can use the app to see who will win and signal to me how to bet.

08:48The moment it comes out and I see my two cards, we'll know every single person's hand.

08:52When Joseph and his team presented this vulnerability two years ago, I reached out to the manufacturer, a firm called Shuffle Master.

08:58A spokesperson for Shuffle Master's parent company, Light and Wonder, told me at the time that Joseph's hacking technique was unrealistic in an actual casino setting.

09:05The company didn't even mention whether it planned to fix the shuffler's security vulnerabilities.

09:09As we prepared to test out how a hacked shuffler can, in fact, let a player cheat in a real game of poker, as you'll see in a moment,

09:15I reached out to the company again to see if they had fixed their security flaws in the two years since they were revealed.

09:22This time, a spokesperson for Light and Wonder responded and said they've now patched those security flaws in virtually every shuffler in use in casinos today by updating their firmware.

09:31But Joseph was still skeptical. After all, the machines have no mechanism to receive software updates over the internet.

09:36They would need a technician to go and apply a firmware update. Now, maybe that happened.

09:42They could also just be implying that they disabled the USB port. But in reality, we could use the ethernet port.

09:48There's a number of ways to pull this off. And even if they do that, that does not fix the issue of a maintenance person pulling this off.

09:54Because once you have access to the internals, it's kind of game over.

09:57To get another opinion about this, I spoke to Doug Polk, a YouTuber and card house owner in Austin, Texas.

10:03So these Shuffle machines, I've seen them all over the place, frankly. I've seen them from the largest, most legitimate established casinos all the way down to people's home games.

10:10So Doug, how do you feel about the Deckmate 2 card shuffler? Like, do you trust this thing?

10:14The Deckmate 2 in a casino location, you shouldn't be too scared of. They have all these casino contracts.

10:19So they have licensed people fixing problems that there might be.

10:22The problem is once someone has a Deckmate 2 on a black market or a secondary market, they are now no longer being upkept by the company itself.

10:30Some guy is just basically in the back fixing the machine and then putting it on the table.

10:34I have heard so many cheating stories of people using these to cheat players out of their money when it's not happening at a casino location.

10:41In fact, I've even heard of stories where at major casinos, there were issues at play with the Deckmate 2.

10:47If there's a camera that knows the cards, there is always some kind of underlying threat. Customers are going to be essentially the mercy of the person setting up the machine.

10:56What if you like show up to somebody's private game or you're in an unlicensed card house of some kind and you see that there's a Deckmate 2 being used?

11:03What do you do?

11:04If you're showing up at a private game and there's a shuffler, I would say you should run for the hills.

11:07We weren't given permission by any casino to replicate the test on their property.

11:11So we're going off the strip to set up a private game in a casino-like environment, a dealer training school in Las Vegas,

11:17where I'm going to play against real players who don't know that the odds are stacked against them.

11:22But before we try this experiment, I need a game plan on how to cheat like a pro.

11:26So I went to see Sal Piacente, a security consultant who advises casinos on cheating.

11:30So how are people cheating in casinos in the real world?

11:33Depends on the game.

11:34You know, in dice, you're switching dice, you're sliding dice.

11:37In Baccarat, you're doing false shuffles where the deal is a mix of cards.

11:40There are so many ways of cheating at poker.

11:42How do you deal with the fact that the deck's going to get cut?

11:44Well, there's a way of beating the cut.

11:45They call it a pass.

11:46So a pass looks like this.

11:48I just set the deck up.

11:50There's my Jack of Spades on top.

11:52So now you would cut the deck.

11:54When you cut, that Jack of Spades now goes right into the middle.

11:59So now when I get ready to deal...

12:05How did you do that?

12:07It's a pass.

12:08I actually re-cut the cards.

12:11I'll do it face up so you can see it.

12:13When you cut the cards, I complete the cut, but I leave it sticking out just a little bit in the back.

12:20When I square the deck up, I get a break above it, and then real quick, I just transpose those two halves.

12:27Oh my God, that was so slick.

12:29I really didn't catch that the first time at all.

12:31I see a lot of surveillance footage.

12:33In poker, you're switching cards with another player.

12:35You're marking cards.

12:37You have to deal with doing false shuffles.

12:39What is a false shuffle?

12:40I'll just give you a quick example of one card, the Jack of Spades.

12:44I want to keep that card on top.

12:46If you shuffle this way in the hands, this is an old style of shuffle, where they would shuffle them just like this.

12:52In this deck, it looks like it's getting mixed.

12:54And I'm only controlling one card here.

12:57And that card never moved.

13:02No. Well, it did move, but I'm keeping track of it.

13:04It goes to the bottom, back to the top.

13:06All these devious ways that dealers can cheat is one reason casinos have started to use shuffling machines in the first place.

13:11Automating the shuffle takes the dealer's motivations out of the equation.

13:14Have you heard about people rigging Deckmate 2 shufflers to cheat?

13:19Well, it's happening a lot in private games.

13:21I've never heard it being done in a casino.

13:23And what about card houses like in, you know, Texas or other states where you might have these gambling establishments that are not regulated in the same way they are here in Vegas?

13:31Anything goes. Then anything goes.

13:34Have you talked to people who have done it?

13:36Correct. So these cheaters were able to get the machines and gaff them before they hit the table.

13:41I personally have never heard of it being done in the casino.

13:45However, if there's money involved, believe me, someone's staying up late at night to figure out how to steal that money.

13:50So there seemed to be a lot of ways to compromise a card shuffler before a game.

13:53But that was only half of our scheme.

13:55Now I needed a way to communicate with Joseph secretly during the game.

13:58A system of signaling with my cheating partner.

14:01The number one scam that happens in poker rooms every day throughout the world undetected is signaling.

14:06How do you send these covert signals?

14:08There's a couple of ways of doing it.

14:09For example, a common gadget in the old days would be this.

14:12This is called a thumper.

14:14And what happens is you would wear this on your body and this would go up to your thigh.

14:19I'd have this like down my pant leg or something.

14:21Correct.

14:22Right.

14:23And then this would be in my shoe.

14:24And this would be on my big toe.

14:25And when I want to give you a signal, I just press down and that'll vibrate in your hand.

14:30Yeah.

14:31In the movie Casino, there's a really clear example of a cheating team using a thumper and getting caught.

14:37I needed a more subtle approach.

14:40So what are some other innovative ways that you've seen people cheat?

14:43Another innovative way where people communicate is a device that looks like this.

14:47This is a loop that goes around your neck.

14:49All this wiring is underneath your clothing.

14:51This goes through a hole in your pants and plugs into your iPhone.

14:54And then, I don't know if you can see that, that's the earpiece.

14:57This little thing goes in your ear.

14:59This is an earpiece.

15:00I would take it like this.

15:02And before you go onto the casino floor, you just take it.

15:05And now it's right next to my eardrum.

15:09And now when my partner is talking to me, I can hear like a third voice in my head.

15:13That's crazy.

15:14So I feel like I was told in kindergarten not to do this kind of thing.

15:17So how do you actually get it out then?

15:18There's only one way to get that out with a magnet.

15:23Wow.

15:24And you can see, there it is.

15:27But I wasn't sure if this voice in my ear approach would work on our cheating scenario.

15:31I needed a partner at the table who could see the cards in their hands, enter a couple of them into an app,

15:36and then silently tell me what to do.

15:38So I laid out our whole scheme to Sal.

15:40Okay, so we're actually going to do this.

15:41We are going to set up a game with unsuspecting players.

15:44We're going to hack the Deckmate 2 shuffler.

15:46And we'd love your advice about how to do this so we don't get caught.

15:50Oh, I'm definitely interested in being involved in this.

15:52I'd love to introduce you then to Joseph Tartaro, who is our hacker here.

15:57Hi Sal. Nice to meet you.

15:58Pleasure. My pleasure.

15:59We'd appreciate your advice about how to actually pull this off.

16:02Is the machine telling you who's going to win?

16:04It's going to tell every hand in rank of which seat's going to win.

16:07So, Joseph is going to have on his phone an app that he created.

16:11The hack shuffler is going to transmit the full exact deck order to his phone.

16:15I need to be able to communicate to him if he has the top hand to stay in or just fold right now.

16:20I'm an absolutely terrible poker player.

16:22I'm going to depend entirely on Joseph to tell me what to do.

16:25He's my cheating partner. The question is how should he signal?

16:28Chips? How many chips in your hand?

16:30Could the signal be raise, fold, call?

16:33Yeah. If you just play with one chip, that's telling him to win.

16:36That's telling him to fold.

16:38Two chips, that means call.

16:40You play with all your chips, that means raise.

16:42So this would be our signaling system.

16:45Joseph picks up one chip, I fold.

16:48Two, I call.

16:50Three, I raise.

16:52You're an experienced poker player. I'm not.

16:54I would like to be told like exactly what to do like an idiot poker robot.

16:58Three chips, three commands, and I will just follow it like a computer that you're programming.

17:02You think that'll work?

17:03Why not? Let's give it a try. Let's make some money.

17:05I'm in.

17:07And now it's time to test if Joseph's exploit can be pulled off in an actual high-stakes game of Texas Hold'em.

17:12And Sal will be watching us on monitors in another room.

17:15As we settle into our places at the table, I mentally run through everything to make sure we're straight.

17:19Joseph's USB hacking device is in place. He has the app running on his phone.

17:23When everything was ready, we brought in our unsuspecting poker players,

17:26a couple of friendly Las Vegas locals named El and Fernando.

17:29They're unaware of the experiment, that Joseph and I know each other, or that anyone will be cheating.

17:34The dealer pulls a freshly shuffled deck from the Deckmate 2 and cuts it.

17:37It's time to play.

17:38My strategy at the moment will be to look at my two cards, fold, and then I can pull out my phone, enter the details I need,

17:45and then I can start signaling to Andy and make sure that he wins as much money as we can.

17:49It's up to you.

17:53And I'm folding.

17:54Fold? Okay.

17:55Early on, I could see our hacked shuffler cheating system was working.

17:58Joseph folded, picked up his phone, and started playing with three chips in his hand.

18:02He was signaling to me to bet.

18:04So it's up to you. Check. Andy?

18:06I think I will actually bet.

18:07Six to stay in.

18:08Six to stay in.

18:09She's playing.

18:10Yeah. Okay.

18:15Turn nice.

18:16Check.

18:17Hold that.

18:18Six.

18:19Action to you.

18:25Okay. Check.

18:26Check.

18:27Six.

18:28I don't like it.

18:30It's all yours, buddy.

18:33And sure enough, I won the hand with a straight.

18:36Money's not real. I'm still sweating though. I don't know why.

18:38Even though I was cheating, or maybe because I was cheating, I found I was incredibly nervous.

18:43On other hands, Joseph and I flubbed our communications.

18:45At one point, I misread his signal and folded when I had a winning hand,

18:48and he looked at me like I was an idiot.

18:50I'll fold. I'll fold. I'll fold. I'll fold. I'm out.

18:56More than an hour into our three-hour game, I kept drawing nothing but bad hands.

19:00I'll fold.

19:02Joseph, loosen it up.

19:04It was clear to me that even though I had a hacker on my side, luck was not.

19:08After all, we'd hacked the shuffler to let me know when I had a good hand, not to actually deal me one.

19:13Fernando, on the other hand, seemed to be on a hot streak.

19:16Just from paying antis and folding on all my losing hands, my pile of chips was dwindling, and his was growing.

19:22To make matters worse, Joseph forgot at one point that he was supposed to signal to me with his left hand,

19:26and I couldn't see how many chips he was holding in his right hand.

19:29I had to not so subtly remind him.

19:31Joseph, are you left-handed?

19:33No.

19:34Okay.

19:35Were the other players onto us?

19:37Would Sal, who was on the security cam, spot what we were doing?

19:39Most worrying of all, it started to seem like I might cheat and still lose.

19:44After more than an hour of watching my stack of chips shrink, I finally got the hidden signal from Joseph to raise.

19:50I could see this might be my last chance, and Fernando, feeling confident, seemed ready to match my bets.

19:56I went all in.

20:0010-8, what do you have?

20:02Ace high.

20:03I've heard pretty hints, but it worked.

20:04Getting spicy over here.

20:06You see the ace, and you're just like, nah, I'm not folding this thing.

20:09Just feeling lucky.

20:10Nice hand.

20:11A few minutes later, thanks to Joseph's signal, I called a big bet from L.

20:14Bet's 40,000.

20:15Even if I didn't go.

20:16I think that's the rest.

20:17She's all in.

20:18You're kind of all in on the next hand.

20:20Yeah.

20:24What do you guys got?

20:25Mm-mm.

20:26A pair of fours, take it.

20:27You weren't scared of the jack, huh?

20:28No.

20:29All right.

20:30Thanks, guys.

20:32Good luck.

20:33Thanks for all the money.

20:34Not long after that, I got the signal from Joseph to bet big again.

20:37I'll do 40.

20:3840,000.

20:39Spice again.

20:41I'll call that.

20:44You can do whatever I want, right?

20:45Yeah, pretty much.

20:46100,000's the bet.

20:47Yikes.

20:48There we go.

20:49A moment of truth.

20:50That's a crazy little hand.

20:52I'm going to do another 100,000.

20:55Another 100,000.

20:56You guys are aggressive.

20:57Right?

20:58All right.

20:59You're calling, dude?

21:00Yeah.

21:01He's calling.

21:02What do you guys have?

21:03When the cards came out, Fernando had a pair of aces.

21:05But I had surprised him with a straight on the river.

21:07A pretty shocking hand that nearly cleaned Fernando out.

21:10You got so lucky.

21:11Were you bluffing the whole time?

21:12Yeah, he got lucky.

21:13Yeah.

21:14I'm sorry.

21:15That was kind of ridiculous.

21:16I owe you an apology, but I'll take it.

21:17It's the semi-bluff, you know?

21:18You're bluffing until you make it.

21:19Before long.

21:20You go all in.

21:21All in.

21:22It was all over.

21:25Too fair.

21:26It was time to bring El back in and come clean.

21:31Welcome back.

21:32I have to confess, both of you are far better poker players than I am, and I was cheating

21:38this whole game.

21:39I guess the question is, can you tell how I was cheating?

21:42I did not tell anything it was up.

21:44Maybe you looked at your phone a couple times?

21:46I don't know.

21:47Actually, it was Joseph who was looking at his phone.

21:49It was the shuffler.

21:50The shuffler was hacked.

21:52It transmitted via Bluetooth the exact order of the deck to Joseph's phone.

21:57Wow.

21:58He was then signaling to me whether I should bet or fold, because honestly, I'm a terrible

22:03poker player.

22:04I have no idea what I'm doing.

22:06After our players left, we brought in Sal to get his thoughts.

22:09That was fantastic.

22:12Gentlemen, that was great.

22:14It worked beautifully.

22:15You're a dangerous individual, my friend.

22:17I wouldn't want to be against you.

22:19Sal, you have seen thousands of hours of actual surveillance footage, including of people

22:24cheating.

22:25Watching this as you were this whole time, how do you think this rates?

22:28What did you think of this as a scam?

22:30I thought it was right on top.

22:31I mean, there's nothing to see.

22:32We were playing it very aggressively.

22:34If we had had more time and just played more conservatively with a smaller edge, I think

22:39it could have been even stealthier, right?

22:40Totally.

22:41Totally.

22:42There's no doubt this would have went on undetected.

22:44The real story here isn't just about cheating at poker.

22:47It's about trust.

22:48As we add more digital smart components to everything from our household products to

22:52cars to medical devices, all of it becomes more vulnerable to surveillance and manipulation.

22:57If a smart card shuffler can let a hacker rig a game of poker, it's worth asking what

23:01other digital devices in our lives might be a risk?

23:04Who else can manipulate the machines around us to get an unfair advantage?

23:08And it's worth remembering that sometimes the old analog approach can even the odds.

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