On Thursday afternoon, popular online poker forum Two Plus Two suddenly went offline. While one might have been forgiven for assuming it had collapsed under the sheer weight of all the ‘PokeStars buying Full Tilt Poker’ speculation/debate/invective, the truth was far more sinister. The following message appeared on the site shortly afterward:
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On April 26th at approximately 11:20 AM pacific time, the Two Plus Two Forums were closed as a result of a hacker who has displayed the ability to access e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords. He also indicated the ability to decrypt passwords.
While it is unclear the extent of data to which he gained access, e-mail addresses and passwords on the Two Plus Two forums should be considered compromised. If you have used your 2+2 password on any other site, you are advised to change it.
For your security we are closing the forums until the breach is patched. We hope to be back up as soon as possible.
For the record, this is the second time the forum has been hacked in recent months. To assist in the forensic investigation, we helpfully offer the utterly unsubstantiated theory that the site was hacked by friends and/or accomplices of Phil Ivey and Howard Lederer. Rightly or wrongly, both men are perennial Two Plus Two whipping boys over their involvement with Full Tilt, and by chance both men made headlines independent of one another on Thursday.
In Phil Ivey’s case, it was not his recent exploits at the Manila Millions tournament that made the news, but his ongoing feud with ex-wife Luciaetta over the terms of their 2009 divorce settlement. The former Mrs. Ivey thinks her hubby (a) understated his assets and (b) conspired to gain influence with the original judge who handled their divorce by funneling $5k to the judge’s campaign coffers. On Thursday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice Nancy Saitta had instructed the court clerk to schedule oral arguments “on the next available calendar.” Luciaetta’s lawyer Bruce Shapiro was careful not to do any victory laps just yet. “It certainly doesn’t mean that we will prevail. What it does mean is that the Supreme Court is taking a serious look at the issue, has additional questions, and we have full confidence in the court to render the appropriate decision.” No date for oral arguments has been set.
It wasn’t an old relationship that put Howard Lederer back in the spotlight, unless it was his love of irony. PokerUpdate happened upon a video of Howard shot by ‘online knowledge forum’ Big Think, apparently dating from the halcyon pre-Black Friday era but just uploaded this week, titled “Howard Lederer on Business Ethics.” While it sounds like a premise that a poker version of Saturday Night Live would concoct, Howard was apparently in earnest when he bandied about justifications for why he never wanted to be known as “that guy that stiffed everybody.” There’s no explanation as to why Big Think chose to release this video now, unless the answer is there really is a God. Enjoy…
