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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

I used to work at a lottery Corp here in Canada. Years ago when speaking with the compliance officer we discussed one of the local draws (the lottery itself is national).

The big "bingo machine" used has balls in it that are mixed then one falls out.

The balls were locked in a safe between uses. In a locked room. In a building with security and many cameras. Each door had a door swipe with each user having specific security clearance.

What I found amusing was the balls were cleaned and weighed (yes I made a joke) before every use.

That doesn't even get into the machine itself. I've worked on slot machines so I am sure the bingo machine thing would have security seals on all the EEPROMs. And the EEPROMs would be verified often if not before each draw.

Now imagine the rules and procedures of an underground lottery.

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> Now imagine the rules and procedures of an underground lottery.

That's what makes it so fascinating. The bingo ball machine concept you describe requires a lot of trust, that's why so much effort has to go into continuous verification. As resiliency goes, this isn't really a feature.

The underground lottery is interesting precisely because it requires comparatively little trust, and the trust it does require is based on reputation and decentralization. For example, as a numbers player, you would be placing your bets with the same banker, one who you know has always paid out in the past, and who has personal ties to you and your neighborhood. The data source and hence the information about whether or not you won is public and hard to fake.

What makes numbers an illegal racket probably has more to do with low payout ratios and the fact that it's not linked in with the tax system (also, it's an unregulated chaos of private persons conducting it).

The difference is the numbers man works with the loan guy, and when you get in over your head, you get beat up.

I ran across 'provably fair' a few years ago... pretty neat concept that packages this all up into a pretty cool little cryptographic package: https://dicesites.com/provably-fair

Can you go into what a 'security seal' on an EEPROM consists of? It is just a tamper resistant sticker or plastic of some sort?

Where I worked a sticker was placed over whichever EEPROMs were held configuration information. Some places would seal any IC, EEPROM, PLCC whatever electronic component it was if it was removable it was sealed. Even the doors to the logic area were sealed and locked, then the key for that door locked and the door that opened to get to that door was also locked away in a locked lock box that needed a key singed out from Security which locked it in their lock box.

There are many types and methods of security seal. I've used double-layered stickers that show VOID when peeled off. There are plastic tags that have a heavy wire that you wrap around then seal inside the cap. The wire would have to be cut using a pair of wire cutters. Any type of security seal would have a serial number known to company auditors.

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