Hacking Expert Raises Alarm Over Data Protection Failures of Maltese Casino Software Firm

A Maltese casino software company is not doing a particularly great job of protecting the sensitive information of customers, according to an IT security expert.

Lilith Wittmann explained in a blog post that she was able to access the “treasure trove of data” as a result of weak protections by The Mill Adventure, a company based in St Julian’s Malta. Wittmann is a member of the Chaos Computer Club, an association for hackers based in Europe.

weak protections were found in Slotmagie.de, Crazybuzzer.de, and Merkurbets.de

According to Wittmann, weak protections were found in Slotmagie.de, Crazybuzzer.de, and Merkurbets.de, which are all online casino companies operated by subsidiaries of German company Merkur. She was able to access player names, email addresses, credit card details, postal addresses, and casino IDs.

In addition, the hacking expert said she accessed more than 70,000 ID photos, selfies, and proofs of address. “Almost all of the data stored in their casino systems [is] publicly accessibly,” she said, referring to Merkur.

Wittmann notified the German Gambling Authority and has confirmed that the vulnerability has now been fixed. However, it is unclear if anyone accessed the data beforehand. The Mill Adventure told local media that it was “an unprecedented event” that resulted in “immediate action to address the issue.”

The post Hacking Expert Raises Alarm Over Data Protection Failures of Maltese Casino Software Firm appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.

London Mayor Under Fire For Not Delivering on 2021 Tube Gambling Ad Ban Manifesto 

Pressure to deliver

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has recently come under increased fire for not delivering on his 2021 re-election manifesto to ban gambling ads on the London Underground.

According to The Standard, detractors accuse Khan of “backtracking.”

wait for Londoners’ complaints and media outcry 

In a recent written question, a member of the London Assembly asked Khan when he “will implement an ethical advertising policy for TfL, rather than wait for Londoners’ complaints and media outcry to remove gambling adverts from the transport network.”

In 2021, the mayor promised to instruct Transport for London to ban gambling adverts on the Tube network “given the devastating way gambling addiction can destroy lives and families.”

Waiting on a definition

Mayor Khan told the assembly member he wanted to “hear more detail about the Government’s plans in this area” before “looking further at any implications for TfL’s policy.”

Khan has now said that he will wait for the Government to “provide a national framework to addressing this issue” before taking any action on behalf of City Hall.

UK capital’s problem gambling rate was twice the British average

Khan’s response followed a warning to him in March by The London Assembly’s health committee that the UK capital’s problem gambling rate was twice the British average.

According to reports, the mayor’s health advisor, Dr. Tom Coffey, told the commission’s investigators that Underground ad bans “had been held up.” The reason Coffey gave was that “City Hall could be subject to legal challenge if it introduced restrictions based on its own definition of ‘harmful gambling.’”

At that time, City Hall was said to have already requested the UK Government and public health partners “to help develop a national definition” of problem gambling. 

Advisor warns of legal costs

According to The Standard, Coffey stated that once the national definition of problem gambling has been published, the Mayor’s team would “move as swiftly as possible” to tackle Underground gambling ads.

would cost millions in legal challenges”

Khan’s health advisor, however, warned against anyone getting ideas of litigation, saying they would not want him to “do something that would cost millions in legal challenges and not move the dial one little bit.”

The post London Mayor Under Fire For Not Delivering on 2021 Tube Gambling Ad Ban Manifesto  appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.

Memories From Ten Years of the Chip Race: Part One

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Chip Race podcast, I’ve delved into my memory to recall ten significant moments in the early evolution of the show.

1. Do we even know what this is?

It’s March 2015, and after a few meetings with an Irish company that makes podcasts aimed at different niches (they have ones already for rugby, cricket, and horse racing), they pitch the idea that we do one on Irish poker. David and I agree to do it. There’s no money but we agree to give up the next seven Monday afternoons to do seven episodes for free. The hope is if the show gets an audience, a sponsor can be found to make it worth all our time.

in a sea of obscure and in some cases obsolete terms, one immediately stood out: the Chip Race

I had done a couple of podcasts already (Irish Poker Radio with Iain Cheyne about five years earlier, and my own short lived Poker Lounge), but David was a podcast virgin. We both liked the “radio show” idea, recognizing that any show aimed just at Ireland needed to be as broad in appeal as possible, hitting every possible demographic within poker. So it was we conceived the idea of a show of segments: two interviews, strategy, a topical, news, bookended by an intro and an outro. To keep with the radio theme, we originally wanted to use the name “The Calling Station,” but it was already taken. We brainstormed a few other suggestions, only to find they were all taken too. In the end, the head of the company commissioning the podcast gave his secretary a glossary of poker terms, which she then whittled down to the ones that weren’t already gone. This was forwarded to us, and in a sea of obscure and in some cases obsolete terms, one immediately stood out: the Chip Race.

The initial idea actually came from David’s best friend, Rob O’Connor, who worked as the photographer for the company in question. He told his boss poker was a niche with a hardcore audience, and he knew just the guys to do it.

After we agreed the format, we decided we needed a third wheel to do the news. Looking into our wider circle of friends, Nick Newport seemed the best candidate. He wasn’t keen on the amount of work required, so we asked Daragh Davey, a much shyer soul at the time. Daragh had no problem putting in the work but his natural shyness made him uneasy. In the end Daragh and Nick worked out a compromise with Daragh agreeing to do all the research and write the script, leaving Nick just to show up and read it.

As any online poker pro will quickly tell you, Monday is absolutely the worst day to try to get us to do anything. Sunday was and still is the biggest online grind of the week: back then I typically started my grind at 1 pm, and finished 15-18 hours later in the early hours of Monday. So it was that Nick basically didn’t show up to the first show, and we had to twist Daragh’s arm to step in. He did a great job and was therefore stuck with it for the rest of the first season.

This photo of the three of us was taken by Rob. The fourth person in the photo is our friend and future Irish Open champion Dan Wilson who gave us arguably the most memorable strategic concept ever in that first season: the tournament half life.

2. We get stopped in the street

April 2015. The first show went out with the popular Tom Kitt as lead guest. We were very happy when it exceeded our wildest expectations and clocked up over 1,000 listeners. Towards the end of that season, we were dragging our tired asses to the studio in Clonskeagh to interview Andy Black when we were stopped by an excited guy neither of us had ever seen before. He proceeded to tell us how much he loved the podcast. We were obviously aware we were reaching a growing audience as the numbers were growing from episode to episode but this really brought it home that the show was a hit.

Eventually we gave up waiting for him to stop so we could start the interview properly, and just pressed record

Andy arrived at the studio on a bicycle and was already talking a mile a minute before he’d parked it. He kept it up for the next hour in the studio. Eventually we gave up waiting for him to stop so we could start the interview properly, and just pressed record. The next hour became the interview that went out, and afterwards Andy walked with us to a pub in Ranelagh, giving us another hour of his unique insights.

3. Over before we got going properly

July 2015. After finishing the first season we were buoyant and optimistic a sponsor would be found to pay for the show going forward. I returned from the World Series of Poker a couple of months later, feeling even more optimistic after a successful and profile raising campaign that saw me commentate on two final tables and chop an event heads up myself. Then the bad news came: the company who owned the podcast had gone into liquidation. Since they owned everything including the name of the show, that seemed to mark the end.

4. But it better not be sh*t, David

February 2017. We have just signed as ambassadors with Unibet. In the course of researching us, one of their advisors stumbles on the Chip Race:

“You used to have a podcast and it was very well received. Maybe you could bring that back.”

It’s fair to say David was a lot more excited at the prospect than I was (although that may have been down to him being keen to avoid Twitching, which was the other option). There were a number of fresh challenges: we didn’t own the name for one thing. Unibet initially suggested they’d look into buying it from the liquidator, but then came back and said it wasn’t possible. We weren’t that keen on calling it something as self limiting as “the Unibet podcast,” so we ended up buying the name ourselves (for a grand if memory serves).

The next problem was that it could no longer be an Irish only facing show for the simple reason that Unibet were not licensed in Ireland at the time. Finally, after being pampered first season with a professional studio and sound engineer at our disposal, we were basically on our own this time around, using our own microphones and laptops to record the show. Faced with all these challenges I wasn’t sure about the wisdom of bringing the show back but in the end I agreed to it with the words:

“But it better not be sh*t, David.”

5. Ambushing Iany

March 2017. Unibet had signed a bunch of other ambassadors simultaneously, so that at least gave us an initial pool of interviewees to draw from. The problem was that apart from Ian Simpson, otherwise known as Iany, none of them were even remotely well known at the time. David and I both felt it could be a stretch to reclaim our old Irish audience with a bunch of non Irish guests they’d never heard of. For this reason we decided to lead with Ian, also strongly suspecting he’d give us the best interview. 

we were taking a risk with our sponsors, potentially undermining their new ambassador

As a twist, we came up with an idea to make the interview more entertaining and therefore more likely to attract listens: instead of just doing a straight interview, we’d start in that vein but then without warning, pivot to a hostile interview mid way through, effectively ambushing Iany. He was the only one on the team we figured we could take this risky approach with as he had the best sense of humour of the lot and the least sense of self importance. Nevertheless, we were taking a risk with our sponsors, potentially undermining their new ambassador, so we decided we’d better clear it with them in advance. They not only loved the idea, but insisted on being there to witness it, rightly anticipating that the unsuspecting Ian’s reaction would be hilarious. It was, and news of the ambush helped us hit the ground running and recapture our Irish audience. I mean, what Irish person doesn’t love the thought of two Irish men ambushing an Englishman? Revenge for Skibbereen.

That concludes the first part of my trip down memory lane. In Part 2, I’ll talk about the dark days when it seemed the show was dying, how we turned it around, and how we got Phil Hellmuth to give arguably the most honest and touching interview of his life.

The post Memories From Ten Years of the Chip Race: Part One appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.

F1 Drama and Controversy as Netflix’s Series 7 of Drive to Survive Finally Lands

Drive to Survive returns…

Devotees of Netflix’s Drive to Survive (DTS) will not need reminding that the latest series dropped on March 7, 2024. For those of you who are not members of the DTS fan club, the latest series (Series 7) dropped on March 7, 2024.

For those who are still nonplussed as to what I’m talking about, DTS is a US-made documentary that gives a behind-the-scenes peek into the glitz and glamor of the world of Formula One. It first aired in 2018, and the series that launched last week is the seventh of what has turned into a hugely successful franchise.

used the series to take F1 to a new audience

It’s a collaboration between the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and Netflix, which initially used the series to take F1 to a new audience – the US. And it has worked.

When the series first aired, there was one Grand Prix in the US – in Austin, Texas – but now there are three, with Miami and Las Vegas added to the schedule.

Back in 2018, the original intention was to make a documentary solely about the Red Bull Racing team but it quickly became clear there was more value and more than enough content to make a documentary that covered all ten teams. The storylines came thick and fast.

DTS was born

For F1 purists, DTS is little more than a glorified F1 soap opera that has been given the Hollywood treatment, and there is no doubt the dramas and tensions are overplayed for artistic purposes. But there is also no doubt that DTS brings the F1 pit lane into our homes in a way that’s never been done before.

Given the drama that unfolded during 2024, it’s no surprise that Series 7 hasn’t disappointed, and has brought to life and added new dimensions to stories that made the front and back pages.

So, on that note, now feels like a good time to delve a little deeper into the biggest talking points of the new series 7, some of which were already front and/or back-page news. What DTS does is take a deep dive into those same stories to bring the viewers a new angle and behind-the-scenes footage.

Okay… here goes.

‍Red Bull and Horner

There weren’t too many stories that could have taken the focus away from Lewis Hamilton’s plan to leave Mercedes for Ferrari at the end of the 2024 season – a story that broke on the eve of the season – but Red Bull and their team boss Christian Horner managed to create one.

It was, as it transpired, the big F1 story of 2024. It was a scandal that rocked the Red Bull organization to its foundation: the allegation by a female employee within the team that Horner had acted inappropriately.

Netflix was always going to cover as much of the scandal as its lawyers would allow, but quite how deeply it was able to delve was a surprise

Worth noting is that the scandal still rumbles on – it will be brought before the UK Courts in January 2026 – so there were certain elements that Netflix had to skirt around, but what the program portrayed was the suffocating level of press scrutiny it placed on Horner.

Intense media scrutiny

It was summed up perfectly by a single quote in a talking head segment with F1 journalist and DTS regular, Will Buxton: “If Christian thought this was going to blow over, he was sorely mistaken.”

Because, in addition to Netflix showing the viewers what they already knew about Horner vs. Red Bull, it also provided an angle on the level of F1 media interest and, crucially, the level of interest from elsewhere in the F1 paddock.

Toto Wolff (Mercedes) and Zak Brown (McLaren) were both happy to offer their thoughts

In terms of Horner himself, he adopted a blanket “no comment” stance – reflecting the legalities mentioned above – but fellow team leaders Toto Wolff (Mercedes) and Zak Brown (McLaren) were both happy to offer their thoughts on how the scandal reflected badly on both Red Bull and F1 itself.

It will have surprised no one that DTS’s villain of the piece was Horner – not for the first time – but it was interesting to see first hand the sheer scale of the grilling he was given by the F1 media.

The Carlos Sainz soap opera

While Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was, of course, the big story in terms of driver changes, its repercussions were far-reaching. Not least for the man whose seat he took at Ferrari: Carlos Sainz.

And fair play to Netflix, it again managed to offer viewers an angle that F1 fans had not seen before, namely that Carlos didn’t take the news well and was every bit as disappointed as he should have been.

the Netflix portrayal of the Spaniard as someone scorned

The official line was that Sainz was accepting of the fact that Ferrari was not in a position to turn away the chance of recruiting a seven-time world champion, but the Netflix portrayal of the Spaniard as someone scorned felt much nearer the mark.

In the DTS take on events, there were no bad guys, but just a disappointed driver who confessed to being “caught off guard” and “upset,” just as anyone reading this piece would have been if given that same news.

Unsurprisingly, the natural direction for this story was to take us on a journey with Sainz as he decides which car he will race in 2025.

We know now, of course, that the answer to the riddle is Williams, but Sainz’s route to making that decision was far from straightforward. In the words of Will Buxton again: “Carlos has to play this right, if he picks the wrong team he might never win a race ever again.”

Initially, it appeared to be a two-way choice between Williams and Stake/ Audi (formerly Sauber) but there was a late twist that for DTS must have been manna from heaven.

Before the twist, which I’ll come to in a bit, the two-way battle was seen through the eyes of Carlos (obviously), Williams’ team boss, James Vowles, and Claire Williams, the daughter of the late Frank Williams, founder of the team.

Audi is expected to be a big player in 2026

For the part of Audi, it was the connection to Carlos Sainz Sr., a famed world rally champion who has had much success driving an Audi, that appeared to take the Spaniard’s thoughts in that direction. That, and also the fact that Audi is expected to be a big player in 2026 as their takeover of Sauber becomes complete.

The meeting that never was

It would be a “project,” and Sainz would be leading it. No doubt Sainz Sr. had his thoughts on the prospect, although DTS didn’t manage to get his definitive view on his son’s potential move to Audi.

The twist came when, after debating the pros and cons of the two offers on the table, a curve ball was thrown in in the form of the controversial Flavio Briatore, who returned to the F1 fold as the executive advisor for the Alpine team.

So much so that the DTS cameras were present at a planned meeting between Sainz and Vowles at a hotel where they expected him to sign on the dotted line.

The meeting never happened. Vowles and co were “stood up.” No Sainz and no signature.

The reason was that Briatore, a long-time admirer of Sainz, had tried to use considerable charm and muscle in his new capacity at Alpine to lure the Spaniard to the Oxfordshire-based team.

evidence that Alpine had more than entered the equation

Ultimately, the flamboyant Italian was unsuccessful in his pursuit of Sainz, but the canceled meeting with Williams, which the DTS cameras recorded at close quarters, was evidence that Alpine had more than entered the equation. They gave Sainz an offer that had to be considered.

Eventually, of course, he did sign on Vowles’ dotted line, but what DTS also revealed was the impact Sainz’s decision had on the entire field. Essentially, aside from back to Ferrari, he could have gone almost anywhere, the impact of which would have rattled through the whole grid.

But it boiled down to longevity, the strength of a team, and, yes, the project, which Vowles did a magnificent job of selling.

the struggling Logan Sargeant 

With the highly-rated Alex Albon already a Williams driver, Vowles’ wish to have two top-level drivers in situ to drive the team forward has now been granted. The days of having the struggling Logan Sargeant in his second car are long gone.

Incidentally, one thing we did learn from DTS was that Sargeant knew very early on in the 2024 season – well before the Sainz soap opera began – that he would not be driving for Williams in 2025.

Lando vs. Max

It was inevitable that DTS would try to dig deep into the ever-increasing on-track rivalry between current world champion Max Verstappen and would-be champion Lando Norris.

The scene was set almost perfectly when the pair, who have been friends and rivals ever since their karting days, had a string of on-track squabbles that spilled over into a war of words between their respective teams.

given a ten-second penalty

It was in the Austrian Grand Prix that this battle reached its peak when the Dutchman squeezed every last drop out of the current regulations to send the Brit off the track. He was given a ten-second penalty for the infraction.

But there were other less dramatic incidents that put the squeeze on the relationship in 2024, including Norris getting his first F1 win in Miami and then beating Verstappen in his home race at Zandvoort.

Both race wins were clear signs that Red Bull’s car – so dominant in 2022 and 2023 – was no longer going to have it all its way, something that didn’t sit comfortably with the ultra-competitive Verstappen.

But it was the personalities and mindsets of the pair, which couldn’t be more different, that DTS decided to focus on.

Plucky but sensitive rivals

Will Buxton summed it up in one sentence: “Key difference between Max and Lando. Max has a complete ‘f**k you’ mentality. That’s not Lando.”

While remaining friends, as human beings they are polar opposites, and one of the few things they now have in common is that they are F1 race winners and are set to  dominate the sport in the next few years.

The Dutchman is very much perceived as DTS’s baddie, while Norris is portrayed as the one lacking confidence and who is sometimes a victim of self-doubt and overthinking. Norris even admitted as much: “My weakness is caring too much about what people say or think or feel.”

Max is mean and ruthless

This was nothing new, however, and regular watchers of DTS will recognize this narrative from the previous series: Max is mean and ruthless, while any challenger is perceived as the plucky but sensitive underdog.

Unfortunately for Verstappen, this is an easy win for DTS as he does little to steer the story away from that narrative. For Norris’ part, he was quoted as being unhappy at the portrayal of his and Verstappen’s friendship as strained.

Future of Perez at Red Bull

DTS ended up telling us what we already knew – that Sergio “Checo” Perez would not be driving a Red Bull car in 2025 – but the journey to get there was revealed to be more convoluted and complicated than most of us imagined.

The program skipped over the fact that Checo had signed a contract to keep him at Red Bull beyond the end of the 2024 season, instead concentrating on why he was no longer considered fast enough to partner Verstappen.

Oddly, while it is well known in F1 circles that most of the hiring and firing at Red Bull is done on the say-so of Dr Helmut Marko, a veteran Red Bul executive, DTS focused on the mental gymnastics required of Christian Horner to make the call.

It also highlighted, without even trying, how the Red Bull team is, in effect, a double enterprise that also includes its junior team on the grid. For 2024, they were known as RB Visa Cash App RB (VCARB) but may as well have been named Red Bull B.

Ricciardo and Tsunoda in joint-pole positions

In the frame to get the Red Bull “A team” seat were Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda, and Liam Lawson, with theoretically Ricciardo and Tsunoda in joint-pole positions as they were the starting drivers in 2024 for VCARB.

When the conversation started roughly halfway through the season, Ricciardo was the name being bandied around, but Horner openly questioned whether he still had the desire needed to be Red Bull’s number two driver.

“If we were to replace Checo the obvious candidate we brought into the wings is Daniel. But has he still got it? Is he prepared to put everything on the line?” was Horner’s hand-wringing reply when asked for his initial thoughts.

But, as it transpired, not only did the Red Bull hierarchy question the Australian’s worthiness for promotion, but they also questioned whether he was the right man to partner Tsunoda in the VCARB team.

Ultimately, the answer was no. Only three top-ten finishes were never going to be enough, and even the news halfway through the season that Perez was to be replaced was still not enough to add sufficient fire to the belly of the Australian.

In true Red Bull fashion, mercy and sentiment were in short supply, and with six races of the season to go, they announced that Ricciardo’s seat in the VCARB would go to Liam Lawson for the remainder of 2024.

Goodbye, Danny Ricc…

But while Red Bull may have given Ricciardo short shrift, he’s always been a DTS favorite and was duly given the treatment by them of a departing legend – one whose personality and love of the camera made him a natural for the DTS cameras.

His departure from the F1 scene made the contest for Checo’s seat a two-way battle between Tsunoda and Lawson, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t an even one.

From the outside looking in, and based on the DTS talking heads, the Japanese driver – for a reason that was never clear – was never really in the frame. Based on his performances in the limited VCARB, Tsunoda had done everything in his power to earn that opportunity, but it was one that never came.

thrust him into pole position for Perez’s seat

Instead, a mid-season test at Silverstone by Lawson, one in which Horner claimed he was lapping at only two-tenths of a second slower than Verstappen, was what appeared to thrust him into pole position for Perez’s seat.

What would have been an interesting interview, but which DTS didn’t manage to nail, was an interview with the notoriously feisty Tsunoda, whose thoughts in being edged out by Lawson would have been television gold.

What DTS did manage to portray, and which would have swayed the Red Bull hierarchy, was Lawson’s drive, determination, and unshakeable confidence. Ultimately, it was those qualities, even more so than the Silverstone test, that opened up the opportunity for him.

Lawson being shoehorned into the VCARB for the final six races of 2024 at the expense of Ricciardo was, in effect, a six-race warm-up for the New Zealander, but it did provide a few tasty on-track clashes between him and Perez.    

As ever, it was left to Will Buxton to sum up this storyline:

“He (Lawson) is like Max was ten years ago. When’s the last time a stand-in ended the career of two massively successful veteran drivers?”

The post F1 Drama and Controversy as Netflix’s Series 7 of Drive to Survive Finally Lands appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.