[HN Gopher] Operation Charlie: Hacking the MBTA CharlieCard from...
___________________________________________________________________
Operation Charlie: Hacking the MBTA CharlieCard from 2008 to
Present
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-12-14 12:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| kibwen wrote:
| As someone who's willing to pay more taxes in order to make
| public transit in Boston free for everyone, I consider this a
| feature, not a bug. (FFS, make the buses free at least, 80% of
| bus rides connect to the T anyway, and getting rid of fares on
| buses makes their schedules more reliable since you no longer
| need to block on people rifling through their pockets and slowly
| feeding wrinkled dollars into the machine.)
| jacobmartin wrote:
| I've noticed that the further you get away from downtown, the
| more likely the bus driver is just going to tell you not to
| bother with it and wave you back if you reach for some dollar
| bills. But like you said, it'd be nice if it was just official
| policy for all bus rides rather than an ad hoc lottery based on
| the driver.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Pretty much everything in MA is like that. The jackboot of
| beacon hill is on the end of a short leg. Give-a-fucks about
| anything and everything expend rapidly the further from it
| you get (both physically and economically).
| thehappypm wrote:
| You have it backwards -- the further from Boston you get,
| the more the communities are mooching off the GBA money
| tree.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| That money comes with strings attached and that's the
| whole point. You could always stop paying and just let
| all that stuff that gets done with state money get done
| by the towns instead but you'd lose the ability to
| dictate terms and we all know that's a non-starter.
|
| Micromanaging a bunch of people who don't care about you
| or your values isn't cheap. You can either pay in dollars
| or in blood. The wealthy suburbanites and urbanites who
| want to see the brown folk in Fall River or the hicks
| west of Worcester march to the official state tune don't
| really have the stomach for an endless supply of "the
| tragic turn of events all began when State Trooper
| McFakeTimeCard pulled over Mr. Lopez, 36 of Springfield
| for an expired inspection sticker..." type news stories
| so it's no surprise that the "US in Iraq" approach gets
| chosen over the "Russians in Syria" approach.
|
| <shrug>
| thehappypm wrote:
| No, beacon hill sends money (via MassHealth for example)
| because it makes Massachusetts a better society. We don't
| want Western Mass to be destitute.
| pivo wrote:
| Agree, I'd prefer that as well. If not that, at least make it
| possible to pay with your phone or smartwatch like NYC has
| done. That really seems to have done a lot to reduce the time
| to board there.
| benj111 wrote:
| I've been mulling the question of whether fares should be free
| recently.
|
| Yes it gets people out of cars, yes it's progressive.
|
| But on the other hand, you don't get much signal of how it's
| actually valued. And if it is valued, surely it turns
| regressive by gentrifying areas served by free transport,
| forcing the poorest away.
|
| Not that I think public transport should be for profit.
| eugenekolo wrote:
| Awesome article, really enjoyed reading it.
|
| Only thing that ruffled my feathers at the end as a MA resident
| was the solution being additional personnel to monitor a non-
| problem.
| [deleted]
| oger wrote:
| Over here in Germany we had a 9 Euro per month all you can eat
| ticket four local public transport during Covid. This now
| indefinitely extended at 49 Euro per month.
| [deleted]
| danbr wrote:
| Based on the outcome of the 2008 hack, some of vulnerabilities
| (value stored on card, not remote server) still remain today.
|
| AFC 2.0 has been delayed for many years, this new MIFARE attack
| vector will remain for a while longer as well.
| YPPH wrote:
| Some people did this in Western Australia in 2016 (using a
| SmartRider, which is also Mifare Classic based). They gained $18
| worth of free travel. The backend system flagged the modified
| card. Both were charged and convicted of hacking and fraud.
|
| https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/perth-...
| googlryas wrote:
| I don't really see why this should be punished more harshly
| than stealing $18 worth of goods from a store.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| There's an implied "how dare you try and pull a fast one on
| the almighty state" multiplier for crimes like this.
|
| You see similar treatment in many similarly petty crimes. In
| my state it's a felony to spray paint state highway and
| transit infrastructure. Tagging adjacent commercial rail
| infrastructure is just vandalism.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Somebody should tell Charlie so he can finally get off of the
| train.
| Gabriel_Martin wrote:
| Sadly, his fate is still unlearn'd
| sva_ wrote:
| > a) Bypasses any ride counter checks, as I would never actually
| have to ride the T with a cloned card, I would simply check my
| balance at the fare machine and then leverage their system design
| to request a new card.
|
| I don't really see how it would bypass the counter check, as I
| would think the device reading out balances also reads out the
| counters.
| endisneigh wrote:
| This is an excellent article but anyone who uses the mbta knows
| it is overkill. If you want a free ride you can simply follow
| someone who paid or put your arm over the gate triggering it to
| open.
| jimmywetnips wrote:
| just enter a station that doesn't even check tickets like
| lechmere
| kbos87 wrote:
| You are right that they technically don't check tickets but
| every now and then the MBTA police show up at a station and
| actually ask for proof of fare validation. I've seen people
| who are shocked when they are being yelled at and handed a
| significant fine.
| sva_ wrote:
| That's funny, I just took the T for the first time yesterday
| as I arrived in Boston, and was curious why such a large
| number of people would get on at a certain stop.
| prottog wrote:
| Was it Lechmere? That may be because for the longest time
| (until the recent Green Line Extension project), Lechmere
| was the terminus for the Green Line, and so it became a
| part of a lot of people's commutes.
| blamazon wrote:
| When I used to catch the orange line from Mass Ave every day,
| one could just ask the friendly MBTA helpers there to open a
| gate for you. Ostensibly a service intended for hands full,
| handicap, etc, but they knowingly used it to let people on for
| free all the time as a sort of 'direct action'. No idea if that
| spirit remains at that station, that would have been 10 years
| ago now.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-15 23:02 UTC)