Overview

Knoll Sr. stood in Knoll Junior's high-tech office. He had come to see if his son's analysis of the rival poker clients had progressed.

Robert gestured for his father to have a seat as he began, "Well Dad, I haven't found any rootkits yet; at least not any permanent ones. I know all of our competitor's poker programs have some kind of anti-cheating checks; I read a bunch of web poker forums that talked about them. People get their accounts deleted for having cheating tools or bots installed that kind of thing."

His father nodded. "You haven't been able to find out how our rivals do their checking yet?"

"Not yet. I haven't really had enough time and I'm still getting up to speed. So far, I've been able to monitor the install process for each poker client and determine that there seems to be nothing unusual put on the player's machine at install time, which is a little weird. If their detection stuff isn't running all the time, then anything malicious that loads first will be able to change the view of reality that their detectors see. This is a problem that the antivirus guys have to deal with all the time. A lot of malware, if it is able to run on the box and the AV doesn't detect it initially, will try to kill the AV programs, block updates from the AV sites, or install a rootkit."

A quizzical look furrowed Knoll's graying eyebrows. "Rootkits are for...