Poker Players Targeted by Cyber Criminals

As the story of online poker player Jens Kyllönen shows, poker players are increasingly coming under attack from hackers.

Kyllönen was staying in Barcelona in September taking part in a European Poker Tour event when his laptop temporarily went missing. He turned to F-Secure, an internet security firm, to see whether it was compromised. The firms found a remote-access Trojan on the computer which had been installed around the time the laptop went missing.

A remote-access Trojan allows an attacker to control and monitor a computer from any other computer connected to the internet. Further investigation by the firm found that the attack is very common and a number of other successful online poker players had fallen victim to it.

Kyllönen has said that he will not be doing interviews, however, he has complained online about the lack of security at the hotel. He also said that the tournament’s organizers, PokerStars, were not aggressive enough when dealing with the situation.

In all likelihood, if Kyllönen hadn’t returned to his room and noticed that the computer was missing then he wouldn’t have known his computer was compromised. Luckily for Kyllönen he did and was therefore able to prevent any serious theft.