Casinos have been fooled for years?

There are always stories about how clever fraudsters manipulate slot machines from Merkur, for example. Not only Merkur, but also Novoline, IGC and other well-known manufacturers are victims of such machine manipulation. Some of these are actually true, others are far-fetched. We want to capture one thing right away. Anyone doing this is breaking the law. Tampering with slot machines is a punishable offence. Hopefully that’s clear to everyone. Nevertheless, we would like to tell you an exciting story. It revolves around Alex, a hacker from Russia who still manages to make millions every year from slot manipulation.

Saint Petersburg as the starting point of an international slot machine scam

Alex lives in Saint Petersburg, a city of over a million inhabitants in northern Russia. He has always been a hacker and offered his services as a freelancer for years. One day a Russian casino approached him. They wanted him to manipulate Novomatic machines for them. These devices were programmed and licensed by the Austrian game manufacturer in such a way that they would pay back 90% of all stakes to players over the long term. The casino wanted to push that number down to 50%. Highly illegal and a scam, but Alex was interested and took the job.

In order to manipulate the Novomatic machines, he had to find out everything about their inner workings. It was the first time he encountered random number generators (RNG). Thanks to the generator, all outcomes of a machine are absolutely random and impossible to predict. Match manipulation should be ruled out. But Alex discovered loopholes in the system – a way to predict when the next big win would come. After all, it’s humans who program random number generators, and they’re notorious for making mistakes, or at least being sloppy. At least if it is a PRNG, as is often the case with older slot machines.

A PRNG is not a true Random Number Generator (RNG). The “P” stands for pseudo. Numbers are not determined 100% randomly, but with the help of an initial value, the so-called “seed”. For example, this can be the internal clock of a slot machine game. Once the algorithm has been deciphered, profits can theoretically be predicted.

Alex developed a method to predict winnings using 24 recorded game rounds. He also put together an app for the mobile phone that vibrated as soon as it was worth clicking the “stop” button on one of the Novomatic devices. He sent accomplices across Russia and other Eastern European countries. They filmed 24 rounds of play on the slot machines, sent the videos to Saint Petersburg where they were evaluated by technicians, sat back down at the machines and only had to wait for their mobile phones to vibrate. Novomatic informed its customers in 2011 that the algorithms of certain slot machines might have been hacked…by then, Russian gamblers had been robbing casinos for 3 years.

Novomatic games were just the beginning of the now globally operating company. When gambling was banned in almost all of Russia in 2009, it was easy for the Russian hacker to get hold of an Aristocrat machine with Mark VI software. An Australian gambling company that equipped many of their titles with this software. Some of the most popular titles include 5 Dragons Gold and Queen of the Nile. It didn’t take long and Alex was able to predict the next outcomes of these machines using 24 spins.

In 2014 there was the first setback for “Operation Manipulating Slot Machines”.

The Russian slot hackers have been able to rip off slot machines for years. Only in 2014 were four members of the organization arrested in St. Louis (USA). They were convicted using surveillance video. A casino had become suspicious because, over a period of a few days, certain machines had paid out a lot, even though no jackpot was won at all. The videos of the day showed several players playing small stakes while filming the device. Then they disappeared, only to return a short time later. Upon her return, her fingers hovered over the stop buttons for a long time before suddenly being hastily pressed. Today we know that at that moment their mobile phones vibrated and they had to act quickly. It turned out that the same players were at many other casinos in the region and had since left the country. When they returned to the USA a little later, they were immediately arrested and interrogated on American soil (otherwise we would not have known anything about the machinations to this day).

However, the small setback did not harm the organization. They just got more imaginative. Instead of video recordings, which then had to be sent to Saint Petersburg, videos were now sent directly via Skype and cell phones were hidden inconspicuously in shirt pockets with a net. Only the fingers above the stop buttons remained as a clue for security forces.

The Russian slot machine hacker has now made himself public

We know about these new methods for two reasons. On the one hand, other employees who won several hundred thousand euros at Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa were arrested in Singapore in 2016. On the other hand, Alex himself has now dared to go public and explains how he was able to hack the slot machines. He reached out to Brendan Koerner, from Wired Magazine, who was the first to report it and to whom we owe all of this information. In an interview he talks about how things went and that 90% of all profits had to be handed over in Saint Petersburg. At $250,000 a week (the average earnings of a crew of 4 players), it’s certainly not a bad income.

Alex doesn’t want to be labeled a criminal. He sees himself as a kind of Robin Hood and manipulating slot machines as a minor offence. According to him, the machines are not manipulated directly, but an error in the program is exploited. Just like counting cards in blackjack. Not welcome, but not illegal either… at least that’s his take on things. However, these real money machine tricks were classified as criminal in the US and Singapore and its associates each received 2 years in prison. Morally, everyone has to decide for themselves how they feel about these machinations.

The group in Saint Petersburg is now thinking of quitting. But not without cashing in on the fat. Alex wants to sell his knowledge to Aristocrat. He got in touch with them and offered to close the security gaps together with them. He also claims to have cracked the new Aristocrat slot machines. We’re talking about the Helix Software, two generations after the Mark VI. But negotiations fizzled out, so he turned to Wired, likely to increase public pressure on Aristocrat.

In the interview, he also flirted with the idea of ​​selling his information to other machine manufacturers or simply making it available to the public. Then it would be possible for everyone to win money with their app at the Aristocrat machines. The consequences would be far-reaching. A few hackers are bad for business, but the bottom line is that casinos are still profitable. If all gamblers get this information for free, these vending machines would have to be completely phased out. Aristocrat would certainly be broke and many gambling operators would have to dig deep to fill their hallways with other machines. It remains to be seen what happens next. It’s definitely exciting. We will keep you updated as soon as further information becomes public.