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The Tech (MIT student newspaper) publishes the banned DEFCON slides
- pius 18y agoContext: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/injunction-requ.html http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/injunction-requ.htm...
- pius 18y agoFrom the Wired article: "Among the documents the MTBA filed with its declaration to the court today is a vulnerability assessment report (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/vulnerability_assessment_of_the_mtba_system.pdf http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/vulnerability_assessm...) that the three students gave the MTBA about the flaws in its system. The document is dated August 8, the day the MTBA filed its lawsuit against the students, and is essentially the information the students declined to give the MTBA before it filed its lawsuit." I can't help but think Wired got this wrong. Knowing who the students' advisor is, I find it pretty hard to believe that the students refused to give the assessment to the MBTA before publishing this presentation.
- dcurtis 18y agoEpic. That's all I can say. The amount of work that went into this is awesome. They're hacking real life.
- fnazeeri 18y agoBrilliant! Like the warcart, particularly the smoke grenade!
- pius 18y agohttp://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/warcart.html http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/warcart.html I want one. :)
- rantfoil 18y agoIncredibly cool. How could they possibly think they could just put the stored value on the card itself, unencrypted? I always assumed the card was just a token that refreshed some database on their end, instead of stupidly storing it in hex right there on the card stripe.
- pius 18y agoSmartcard security is notoriously bad in the vast majority of deployed systems. The people designing these high human traffic systems are usually much more concerned about other factors (low latency at the turnstile, minimal number of network connections to wire, card reliability, etc.) than they are about security.
- jrockway 18y agoSometimes I wonder why they even bother collecting fares. Fares rarely cover the cost, so paying money to develop an expensive fare collection system that's easily hackable doesn't make much sense. Oh well, at least the politicians can give their contractor buddies my money!
- stcredzero 18y agoThere needs to be good standards program for security audits. There is a serious problem, because security is not well understood. It's very easy to sell the government and private organizations a shoddy set of goods. What about institutionalizing white hat hacking, somehow? I could imagine a system where two competing tiger teams ensure good results. Basically, pay bonuses for actually breaking the security measures. If only one team succeeds in breaking in, then they get both team's bonus.
- krschultz 18y agoWell not sure about what part of the world you are in, but here in Manhattan the MTA subway system pays for itself. Only about 4-5% of their operating budget comes from taxes, with the remainder coming from fares. A serious vulnerability would crush their budget. I can just imagine going into some back room to buy a $1,000 metro card for $5. However I can't imagine many people really bothering, an unlimited card is only $81 a month. When rent is $2500 a one bedroom apartment in brooklyn, and lunch is $15 every day, $81 for all of your transportation really isn't a big deal. Excellent hack though.
- babul 18y agoAwesome social and software hack. Just hope the media and security services (and alarmists) in general don't use it to go on about anti-terrorism and how we are all under constant terrorist threat (and push more anti-terror measures).
- pmorici 18y agoYeah, god forbid Osama and his ilk get a free ride on the subway.
- froo 18y agoHe will probably need it now that his driver has been jailed?
- mleonhard 18y agoNot just jailed, tortured. Unless you think that stress positions and sleep deprivation are just rough questioning. That man will have psychological trauma for the rest of his life. Go USA - We're Number One!
- helveticaman 18y agoIt all makes me think terrorists must be really incompetent if they can't pull off these same hacks. I neither respect nor fear Osama.
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- DanielBMarkham 18y agoKudos -- especially for the RFID work. Decidedly non-trivial.
- jrockway 18y agoIt's nice that they used the GNU Radio for their attack. I was planning on doing this with Chicago's "Chicago Card", but didn't have the money for a USRP when I was in school. (And, there was no research budget for undergrads.) I am seriously tempted to buy one now, though.
- emmett 18y agoBug: the scribd link seems to point to the pdf as well.
- pius 18y agoThat's not a bug, it's a feature. I think. :) I tried the Scribd vacuum link right after posting and I got an error saying that the PDF was encrypted, so it wouldn't be able to show it. I think that result gets cached and Scribd just redirects to the PDF for subsequent requests.
- sh1mmer 18y agoIt would be useful to indicate that the link was a pdf. Maybe it's because I haven't had a coffee yet today, but the [scribd] in the title made me think the whole link was going to scribd not a PDF.
- andreyf 18y agoMake sure to pay in cash for any cards that you alter...
- andreyf 18y agoI still wouldn't use a modified MTA card - cameras are pointed at every turnstile, and swipes could be logged with card id/money left on card. From a master log, it would be pretty trivial to find any inconsistencies and id you from the tapes...
- ashu 18y agowho said all this was done to actually use the hacked cards? :)
- william42 18y agoWell if it wasn't then why would they be presenting it at DefCon?
- krschultz 18y agoThere is no id on the cards, I pay for cash with mine every time, how are they going to know? I usually put $60-100 on mine each time, if I just kept refilling it at home how would they know? Sure they will notice a guy with a $50,000 card, but if you just update it to a modest amount every day they would never notice.
- andreyf 18y agoIn their slides, the first bits are an unique id (it's also printed on my MTA card (from NYC) under the date). This doesn't make you personally identifiable if you paid cash for the card, but it's an unique to the card, so discrepancies could be caught pretty easily.
- eru 18y agoSo how about choosing a new ID every time you update your card?
- mynameishere 18y agoOkay, this is evidentally about people stealing subway fares or some shit. I nodded off about 3 slides in, so I could be wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong, do. Still, I'm glad to know what the best minds of my generation are up to: utilizing their magnificent collective genius to steal the occasional nickel. The occasional dime. Great work, guys. Here's a quarter. Einstein always held out for the quarters... Here's a tip: Just pay the goddamned fare and get some real work done. Thanks. Seymour cray [iirc] had an algorithm for buying the best car: 1. Enter dealership. 2. Point at car. 3. Purchase car. ...point is: Don't worry about the trivial parts of life.
- gaius 18y agoYou're missing the point. This is about demonstrating that it is a bad idea to use this technology for anything other than limited low-value transactions. The smartcard industry has been pushing "one card for everything" for years, and this shows that it's still a long way off. I'll keep my credit card and my travel pass separate, thanks.
- chris_l 18y agoSo what's the phantom meeting exploit?
- pmorici 18y agoSounds like they just walked into the transit authority offices and said they were there for a meeting if anyone questioned their presence.
- lpgauth 18y agoI took the bus yesterday and they just starting rolling out a new magnetic card system. I was actually thinking of buying a card reader off ebay and try to reverse engineer it.
- aspirant 18y agoLook at the man on the Charlie Card. Seriously, go look. See him leaning out of the window with that mocking grin, waiving his forged card in triumph and thinking, "Suckers!"
- projectileboy 18y agoFirst off, let me say that I thought this presentation was cool as hell - a holistic view of security, showing all the various weaknesses, with cost/value. Very, very well done. Having said that, I also have to say that there's an underlying attitude that often exists from folks showing off security loopholes that bugs me - "we're just showing all the ways in which this system sucks, so we're really the good guys." Right. And if I walk up to you on the street and stab you in the eye with my pen, I'm just showing you how vulnerable you are by not wearing body armor and a helmet with a face shield.
- Chocobean 18y agoSometimes it's a little showy and really more intended to harm than help, yeah. In this case it's probably more like this: Government is selling everyone body expensive armour that claims to protect your vitals against BIC pen stabbings, built by contractors who are buddies with those in power. A group of hackers walk around and take pictures of holes on people's armours. They also demonstrate stabbing a dummy wearing said expensive armour.
- projectileboy 18y agoLOL... Thanks for the improvement on the analogy. From now on this is going to be my mental model for whether or not a "white hat" security guy is making the world better or worse.
- mindslight 18y agoI opened the slides only expecting the analysis of the contents and security vulnerabilities of Charlie cards. As it's easy to exploit a broken fare collection system with little risk (perhaps even commercially), this design shows serious negligence on the part of the MBTA. Kudos to them for figuring out something every Boston hacker was casually wondering about. However, these slides go beyond that, briefly covering many avenues that seem to be more aimless mischief than serious analysis. Most of the slides remind me more of the Anarchist Cookbook than a vulnerability disclosure. I wonder why they didn't include the "hop over the gate" and "pay with counterfeit money" exploits?