Poker Shuffler Machines Can Be Hacked, Cybersecurity Experts Warn

Futurism beware: the card shuffling machines used in poker games can be hacked by cheaters, experts from IOActive, a cybersecurity company, have found.

For reference: Deck Mate is a card shuffling machine developed by SHFL Entertainment in 2002.

It is mainly used in poker games to help dealers shuffle cards faster and more efficiently. In 2012, the company released Deck Mate 2, which can shuffle cards in 22 seconds, compared to 45 seconds for the original version.

The experts were intrigued by a suspicious poker hand that happened last year at the Hustler Live casino in Las Vegas. A player won a hand with terrible cards, and it was not a bluff. The casino could not find any evidence of cheating by the player.

The experts suspect that this is the hand in question:

The IOActive experts found out that the Deck Mate machines have a USB port that can be used to hack them.

They used a simple Raspberry Pi microcomputer to connect to the port and access the machine’s data.

Then they can send the information to a phone app via Bluetooth and know what cards are coming next.

No casino has reported any cases of Deck Mate hacking so far. And the experts didn’t test their hacking device in a real casino setting. It would be very hard to pull off such a scam without being noticed. But it’s still a warning for casinos to secure their machines and prevent any foul play.