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California's Wireless Road Tolls Easily Hackable

Posted by timothy on from the no-sir-I-was-in-seattle-at-the-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nate Lawson, a researcher at RootLabs, has found a way to clone the wireless transponders used by the Bay Area FasTrak road toll system. This means you can copy the ID of another driver onto your own device and, as a result, travel for free while others foot the bill. Lawson also raises the interesting point of using the FasTrak system to create false alibis, by overwriting one's own ID onto another driver's device before committing a crime. Luckily, Lawson wasn't sued before he could reveal his research, unlike those pesky MIT students."

6 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. sounds familiar by gentooligan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think I read about this in little brother.

  2. Cameras at every toll booth by maynard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And they can record license plates. I think this hack has little criminal viability. Anyone who used it extensively would be caught in short order. Though authorities might be willing to let the criminal conduct continue on until the criminal passed the felony threshold.

    1. Re:Cameras at every toll booth by neapolitan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep - that was my first thoughts too. Driving with an unreadable license plate, though, is grounds to get you pulled over anyway.

      In case you didn't know, most toll booth places have:

          Cameras front-mounted to take a picture of YOU or passengers...

          Cameras in the back to take a picture of your plate...

          Occasional cops sitting at the side of the road that are ready to pull you over.

      It's academically interesting (and it should be) but not useful for the criminal. You can always simply drive through a checkpoint without an ez-pass, and most likely nothing will happen for a long time. Is it worth it? Nope.

      --
      Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
    2. Re:Cameras at every toll booth by Chainsaw76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "pretty foolproof"
      Your kidding right? There have been many cases of the Red Light Companies moving sensors around to catch people who Hadn't run the red light. And the one time I got a ticket from this system, the plate was unreadable, the Dark 4 door sedan pictured didn't look anything like my white 2 seat convertible, and we (my car and I) were 800 miles away at the time on the time stamp.

      -J

    3. Re:Cameras at every toll booth by garett_spencley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I sort of agree with your sentiment, except that I percieve using a car on the road is a privilege"

      I don't. We paid to put the roads there and everyone should be able to use them however the hell they want so long as they don't harm anyone.

      I prefer to punish people AFTER they have done harm. Not before.

      License plates, laws against drunk driving[1], justifying drug criminalization by claiming that drug use increases rates of crime, placing curfews on public parks etc. is all preemptive and it places a burden on an innocent society. There's no reason not to throw the book at someone who breaks the law but asking society to give up their freedom for the sake of reducing crime statistics is unfair. It costs tax dollars, gives the government a way to profit off of criminal behaviour (traffic fines) and regulation (licenses, vehicle registration etc.) and I don't think it actually does much in the way of achieving it's goal of preventing crime anyway.

      [1] - I realize that's borderline trollish so I'll justify that: killing someone and violating traffic laws is already illegal. Why do we have to make it more illegal? Has all of this money spent - and made - by cracking down on drunk drivers actually reduced the number of dangerous drivers on the road ? What about sober drivers who are just as dangerous as people who are drunk ? In Ontario it's now illegal to drive with ANY ALCOHOL WHAT-SO-EVER in your system. You can not transport any alcohol that has been opened and any alcohol you do transport needs to be out of reach of the driver (ie: in the trunk). During peak holidays such as new years etc. they put up road blocks on every major road and stop every single car to smell the driver's breath. It punishes everyone for the mistakes of a few. It's getting extremely out of hand.

  3. Anonymous clubs by bugnuts · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps this can be used to create privacy clubs, where they all travel on cloned cards and all share the bill. Their movements couldn't be tracked via this system as long as multiple people were using it.

    I hope this wasn't posted already... I searched the thread for "Anonymous" and then felt kind of silly.