Cybersecurity Fantasy Role-playing Game
It’s called Cryptomancer. Think computer hacking plus magic. I know nothing about it, but it feels reminiscent of Shadowrun.
Reddit thread. RPG.net thread.
EDITED TO ADD (12/14): A review.
Entries Tagged "games"
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A High-End Card-Reading Device
An impressive Chinese device that automatically reads marked cards in order to cheat at poker and other card games.
Hacking Bridge-Hand Generation Software
Roughly three weeks later, there is a operation program available to crack ACBL hand records.
- Given three consecutive boards, all the remaining boards for that session can be determined.
- The program can be easily parallelized. This analysis can be finished while sessions are still running
this would permit the following type of attack:
- A confederate watch boards 1-3 of the USBF team trials on vugraph
- The confederate uses Amazon web services to crack all the rest of the boards for that session
- The confederate texts the hands to a players smart phone
- The player hits the head, whips out his smart phone, and …
Security Lessons from the Game of Werewolf
I can’t believe I haven’t posted this before.
Plagiarism in Crossword Puzzles
Yet another fraud discovered through data analysis.
EDITED TO ADD (3/11): More.
Cheating at Professional Bridge
Interesting article on detecting cheaters in professional bridge using big-data analysis.
Basically, a big part of the game is the communication of information between the partners. But only certain communications channels are permitted. Cheating involves partners sending secret signals to each other.
The results of this can be detected by analyzing lots of games the partners play. If they consistently make plays that should turn out badly based on the information they should know, but end up turning out well given the actual distribution of the cards, then we know that some sort of secret signaling is involved.
Friday Squid Blogging: Disney's Minigame Squid Wars
It looks like a Nintendo game.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Hacking the Game Show "Press Your Luck"
Fascinating story about a man who figured out how to hack the game show “Press Your Luck” in 1984.
Detecting Betrayal in Diplomacy Games
Interesting research detecting betrayal in the game of Diplomacy by analyzing interplayer messages.
One harbinger was a shift in politeness. Players who were excessively polite in general were more likely to betray, and people who were suddenly more polite were more likely to become victims of betrayal, study coauthor and Cornell graduate student Vlad Niculae reported July 29 at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Beijing. Consider this exchange from one round:
Germany: Can I suggest you move your armies east and then I will support you? Then next year you move [there] and dismantle Turkey. I will deal with England and France, you take out Italy.
Austria: Sounds like a perfect plan! Happy to follow through. And — thank you Bruder!
Austria’s next move was invading German territory. Bam! Betrayal.
An increase planning-related language by the soon-to-be victim also indicated impending betrayal, a signal that emerges a few rounds before the treachery ensues. And correspondence of soon-to-be betrayers had an uptick in positive sentiment in the lead-up to their breach.
Working from these linguistic cues, a computer program could peg future betrayal 57 percent of the time. That might not sound like much, but it was better than the accuracy of the human players, who never saw it coming. And remember that by definition, a betrayer conceals the intention to betray; the breach is unexpected (that whole trust thing). Given that inherent deceit, 57 percent isn’t so bad.
Back when I was in high school, I briefly published a postal Diplomacy zine.
Academic paper.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.