REFER SPOT GROUP - EXPOSED

[scrollock]

as some of you are aware a lot of players are having problems with this group, well first i will let you know my sign up experineces, until signing upto the the jupiter club i didn't have any problmems, next thing i know the software doesnt work, i have the bonus removed and hey presto the software works!!!!!!!!!!, then i get a bonus and the software doesnt work work.

well fact is, this is done on purpose by the refer spot group becuase i have been given the MG code to remove this alteration to the software.

anyway back to present things, after signing up to this group i didnt give them a sceond thought,( despite their reasonable reloads) because of the lack 24/7 support at the time.

as has been reported on several threads here, referspot disable neteller facillites, after several requests i was able to test this out myself last weekend and i can confirm that this is true.

now tonight i have went to deposit with this group and they have disabled my credit card facitlity.

going back to last week when i tried to deposit with neteller,i couldn't get into my account because they had read the reg keys on my computer system and replaced my account number in the bella vegas software with my jackpot city account (bellerock), so yes guys this group is reading your system and stealing acc no.s and passwords.

this group is abusing MG software bigtime and it is about time something is done about it.

[vinylweatherman]

There are two registry keys. One is simply MGS, and will most probably lie just above the "Microgaming" key. They are almost identical, but they seem to serve slightly different purposes. Surely reading account numbers from the registry for other MG accounts through altered MG client software is a serious breach of their licence. I don't think the passwords are in the registry, but in the password file. This will be in a standard place though, and can easily be nicked if access is available.

If anyone is worried there is a defence though. Construct an "include" file to clear sensitive account numbers from the keys, and another to selectively replace them as and when you play.

If this can be done by this group, perhaps all the trouble I and other users are having with some MG casinos are the result of some form of sabotage.

I am sure I had some "Refer spot" spam in the past!

Do you have any sort of test to see whether or not someone has been compromised by this group? Perhaps we should be thankful for disabled deposit options, withdrawal is probably the next function to be disabled!

[scrollock]

i forgot to mention, i signed up for every casino in this group, lost £100's except for bella vegas, surpise surpise, i was locked out of bella vegas for "security reasons" but was alowwed to deposit at the others without a problem

[vinylweatherman]

Nope, passwords ARE in the registry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (A simple test demonstrates this).

If they can lift the account number they can lift the password! Even though it is encrypted it is no protection as anyone who has fixed a bug by editing the registry will know.
I would suggest that players who play at this group DISABLE the "Remember password" feature of all their MG casinos. This is a "bloody stupid" schoolboy programming error by MG! Passwords should be stored separately from other login information.
Stealing the "Thumper" registry key from a computer is enough to be able to access all a player's MG accounts from another computer. A firewall would prevent this (it would need to be a damn good one, as each MG needs to be able to access it's own "thumper" key, but not the keys for another casino), but as we know we are told to disable our firewalls to enable us to play!!!!!!

[lowie]

Note that Microgaming stores password info in two places in the registry.

a) HKEY_CURRENT_USER/MGS/thumper/Casino/CASINONAME/key
b) HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Microgaming/Thumper/CASINONAME/Key

You have to remove both to 'forget' the password.

[dominique]

You don't have to disable zone alarm to play, and you can control every single thing with zone alarm. It's the best firewall as far as I'm concerned.

I play at Lake Palace and Grand Bay and withdraw routinely with no problems. Nothing has ever been disabled either.

[barb007]

Rumors being what rumors are, there was one floating around some months ago, that this group was actually owned and run by MG itself. I have no clue as to whether this is factual, but suppositionally speaking, if it were true, they could basically alter the MG code however they choose w/o repercussion, could they not?

[spearmaster]

Definitely not owned by MG, and to be quite frank, there are always repercussions for your actions no matter who owns you, so to speak.

[GrandMaster]

Stealing the "Thumper" registry key from a computer is enough to be able to access all a player's MG accounts from another computer. A firewall would prevent this (it would need to be a damn good one, as each MG needs to be able to access it's own "thumper" key, but not the keys for another casino), but as we know we are told to disable our firewalls to enable us to play!!!!!!

A firewall would not help (and you can run casinos with a firewall enabled, although you may need to open certain ports manually). A casino, like any other application, can do anything that the user running it can. If you can read the registry key or a file, so can the casino software. The casino software needs to be able to communicate with the server, it could send your password there if it wanted to. If you are worried about this, on an NT based system you could set up a different user account for every MG casino, and then you would not have to worry about one casino reading another casino's password.

[vinylweatherman]

Unfortunately I have 98SE. I have heard many players with software trouble, and the advice from casino support is DISABLE any firewall and virus software. If a Migrogaming Licencee is up to no good it seems there is nothing much a user can do other than be aware of this problem and deal with it as best they can.
I had always thought the password was put in the "passwords" windows file in the system folder as well as being encrypted. It demonstrates that casino software is not as secure as they would like us to believe. There has already been a case of a rival group using malware to sabotage the functionality of another casino group (Royal Dutch or something similar). Ever since the botched Viper upgrades that started at the beginning of the year I have formed an intimate relationship with my Windows Registry, my activeX folder, and my system folders. Viper is just too "clever", and there is a lack of technical expertise at the disposal of the player. Even the casino tech support are often scratching their heads for weeks with some of these issues with little progress. The best we have are the various players sharing experiences, and perhaps one day one of us will come up with solutions to these various problems that will empower us, rather than leave us to the mercy of the operators who are "currently working on this issue".
Microgaming should also investigate if Refer Spot are misusing the software customisations by reading and writing registry keys outside of what is needed to effectively operate their OWN client interface; removing their licence if it is found to be the case.
At least I have DOS with my Windows. I can put a stop to this sort of marlarkey on my machine by injecting custom steps in the boot process, although I currently use registry "include" files for rapid adjustments to my MG casinos.