Interview With MIT Subway Hacker Zack Anderson

longacre writes "In his most extensive interview since the DefCon controversy emerged, MIT subway hacker Zack Anderson talks with Popular Mechanics about what's wrong with the Charlie Card, what happened at DefCon, and what it's like to tango with the FBI and the MBTA. The interview comes on the heels of Tuesday's court ruling denying motions by the MBTA to issue a preliminary injunction aimed at keeping the students quiet for a further five months."

Comments

You F*cking Idiot

[mpapet]

You do a good job at sounding like you know something about the subject, but you are woefully misinformed and out of date. The reason offline stored value is not used is that it is too slow for transit. By now the speeds are probably better than they were a few years ago. The other reason is the cost structure makes online systems politically attractive. Municipalities waste 100's of millions of dollars up front for implementing online system to have going-forward operating costs negligibly lower.

The security should lie with the central system.
There is no need for this kind of antiquated thinking anymore. Their system is centralized. The guy is misinformed about what is stored on the card. The guy is also misinformed about cloning. Where will he source the right card that is ready for initialization? Will he know how to initialize it correctly? It would work in Hollywood, but in real life it's non-trivial.