The Public Face of Seals with Clubs, a Bitcoin Gambling Site, Gets an Unwelcome Surprise
For those of you who love bitcoin and play online poker, then you've probably heard of an online gambling platform known as Seals with Clubs. The site allows players to gamble and play with bitcoin as well as other related altcoins and cryptocurrencies. Yet as it turns out, the site may have been operating illegally, and this is the first time that the Gaming Control Board appears to have raided someone's house over an illegal website. The public face of Seals with Clubs belongs to professional gambler and gamer Bryan Micon, who is currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Micon claims that....
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Bryan Micon, owner of Seals with Clubs, has been charged by the Nevada Attorney General's Office for operating an illegal bitcoin gambling site. A warrant for his arrest has already been issued last April. According to defense attorney Richard Schonfeld, Micon will serve an as-yet-unspecified probation term and pay a fine of $25,000. Micon recently flew in from his hometown in Antigua to Nevada to answer the charges. Illegal Bitcoin Gambling. Seals with Clubs has since been shut down due to the allegations. Micon also has to forfeit assets seized when Nevada Gaming Commission agents raided....
Bitcoin poker website Seals With Clubs has announced that it is shutting down. In a notice posted on its website, Seals With Clubs cited security issues but did not disclose the specific events that led to the decision. The site has experienced security problems in the past, having been the target of a database hack in December 2013 that resulted in the theft of 42,000 passwords. Seals With Clubs stated that withdrawals will be available and advised all users to not deposit any bitcoins. Describing the situation as one constituting "a perpetual state of jeopardy", Seals With Clubs said....
Bitcoin poker site Seals with Clubs has confirmed that its database was compromised, although it failed to mention that it lost 42,020 hashed passwords in the process. The hashes were posted to a forum some 24 hours earlier and needless to say they attracted plenty of people bent on cracking them. For some reason Seals with Clubs used SHA1 hash functions, which are for all intents and purposes obsolete. Even the latest SHA3 hash is not suitable for passwords and it appears that the site was relying on cryptographic salting to make them more secure, making sure that different hashes would....
Over one year ago, the launch of Erik Voorhees' SatoshiDice marked the moment that Bitcoin gambling took its first major step into the mainstream. The site offered a level of convenience unmatched by any Bitcoin gambling site - indeed, any online gambling site regardless of payment method, in history: users send money to a Bitcoin address, and if they win they immediately get more money back. The site was an instant hit, rapidly growing to such a point that roughly 50% of all transactions on the Bitcoin network were to or from its addresses. By the beginning of 2013, the site was earning....
Bryan Micon, operator of the closed down bitcoin-fueled poker site Seals With Clubs, has been charged by the Nevada Attorney General with operating an unlicensed gambling enterprise, and faces up to ten years in prison and a US$50,000 fine. Hoping to be able to cover his legal expenses, Micon has since launched a defense fund. It first became evident that something was amiss at Seals With Clubs in February of this year, as the site indicated it would be shutting down, which was at the time attributed to unspecified operational security concerns. Several days later, Micon uploaded a YouTube....