Black Hat Hackers have figured out a way to trick San Francisco's computerized parking meter system into giving away unlimited free parking by cloning the smart cards used to pay fees.
Speaking at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, hackers Jacob Appelbaum, Joe Grand and Chris Tarnovsky said they were able to compromise the system by monitoring the communications that occur between the electronic meters and the smart cards. They were then able to carry out what's known as a replay attack, in which the communications were repeated on their own blank smart cards.
"We own the San Francisco parking meter system," Appelbaum said in an interview with El Reg. "They clearly did not do enough due diligence if at all from a security perspective. The idea that someone is not already exploiting it is sort of laughable."
During their 75-minute talk, the team showed a picture of a cloned smart card in one of the San Francisco parking meters. It's value: $999.99. The team was careful to say they never actually used any of the stored credit to pay for parking.
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Friday, July 31, 2009
Meter insecurity raises specter of free parking hacks
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