The Trojan Games: Spyware lets crims see your poker hand

The odds of you winning your online poker game have just got longer, thanks to the discovery of a spyware program which allows cybercriminals to see your hand.

Eset uncovered the scam on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

The security software company says Odlanor takes screen shots of the infected players's virtual poker hand to allow the criminal to cheat during online games.

Eset says as of September 16, several hundred users have been infected with Win32/Spy.Odlanor.

Robert Lipovsky, Eset malware researcher, says users usually get infected when downloading some other, useful application from sources different than the official websites of the software authors.

"This malware masquerades as benign installers for various general purpose programs, such as Daemon Tools or mTorrent," Lipovsky says.

In other cases it was loaded onto the victim's system through various poker-related programs, such as poker player databases and poker calculators.

The perpetrator then attempts to join the table where the victim is playing and gains an unfair advantage by being able to see the cards in the victim's hands.

Lipovsky says he's unsure whether the perpetrator plays the games manually or in some automated fashion.

Lipovsky says in newer version of the malware, general-purpose data-stealing functionality has been added, enabling password extraction from various web browsers.

While the trojan has been seen mainly in Eastern European countries, Eset is warning that it provides a threat to any player of online poker.