[UA] Re: Las Vegas UA

[Matt Smith]

David M Jacobs wrote:
> As Chris mentioned before, those machines are *heavy*, and it's hardly 
> unobtrusive, swapping a couple of hundred kilos of cabinet around.  So, 
> instead, they swap the motherboard out, moving it from machine to machine.
> 
> Most places want as little downtime on their machines as possible 
> (particularly smaller venues), so they're not as likely to question a 
> trusted tech swapping the motherboard as they would losing their whole 
> machine for a day, whilst the tech goes for a replacement.
> 
> So you have one guy moving from casino to casino, jamming gum in the 
> coin mechs, and his tech confederate, waiting for the call, coming out 
> and replacing the coin mech, flipping dip switches by sleight of hand, 
> saying "I'll have to take that back to the shop" and swapping out the 
> motherboard.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Also, many, but not all of the slot machines in the big Las Vegas 
casinos are nothing more than networked computers.

Maybe someone could tap into those computer networks and collect all 
that random number goodness for some nefarious purpose.

-Matt