Protection against outside software users

[avatarthief]

I didn't look hard but the search function didn't bring up the article I was looking for so I'm just going to start a thread. What measures is Unibet taking to prevent the use of outside software? Is it possible for a player to use software that is not allowed? If so, are there certain types of software that are harder to prevent?

The reason I am asking is that I was in a PLO cash game where a player insta-bet 58.429561...% of (rakeless) pot, meaning they bet in significantly less than a second. Since I know that you can't set up your own bet-size buttons (and the cash amount was not a round number at all), the only conclusion I can draw so far is that they were using some kind of outside software and bet a little too quickly either by accident or because they felt they would not be caught. I attached a screenshot of them making the bet so that you can investigate quicker if needed.

If there is outside software being used in the microstakes by careless cheaters then that doesn't inspire confidence in your security.

[Stubbe-Unibet]

Player didn't bet instantly but took 1.41 seconds to act. This is quite normal for mobile players, as the slider allows you to bet "odd" amounts in 1-2 seconds. In other words, nothing suspicious about this one hand.

Also had a quick look at the account and have no reason to suspect anything fishy.

We have good tools in place for detecting this kind of anomalies (if it was an anomaly), but we don't share information about how exactly we're detecting and preventing use of third party software, as that info really only benefits people with bad intentions. 

[avatarthief]

Right that explains it, thank you. It would not have been possible to do this on the computer but I have never used the phone app and never saw this before.

This puts my mind at ease, I don't need to know any more.

[CuteRaven]

8 hours ago, Stubbe-Unibet said:

we don't share information about how exactly we're detecting and preventing use of third party software, as that info really only benefits people with bad intentions. 

You're probably correct, but sometimes I still wonder if it is really so.

It's a similar dilemma with proprietary vs open source software. On the one hand it should be easier to find a vulnerability in open source software because you can just see the code. On the other hand the code is open to everyone, so everyone can report and fix problems that they find, so problems are usually fixed faster.

I would imagine it's similar with anticheat, it's more difficult to break into a black box like Unibet, but on the other hand if you find a way to cheat it's less likely that you would be caught by a smaller team that trusts their own anticheat system, (compared to a completely open system that everyone can fix and monitoring) and you will probably have more time to cheat before you are banned.

I don't know if open anticheat systems have ever been tried in practice so maybe it's just a bad idea.