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Coca-Cola Reserves a Massive Range of MAC Addresses

Posted by timothy on from the maytag-and-starbucks-champing-at-bit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "GNU MacChanger's developer has found by chance that The Coca-Cola company got a range of MAC addresses allocated at the OUI, the IEEE Registration Authority in charge of managing the MAC addresses spectrum. What would Coca-Cola want around 16 million MAC addresses reserved? What are they planning to use them for? Could this part of a strategy around the Internet-of-things concept?"

31 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Not cans by Shatrat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Vertically integrated vending machines?

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    1. Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then put your dollar bills into the machine and never worry. Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers. You may argue that we do so indirectly with higher fees, but not really. Fraud is a few billion dollars, but the fees they collect cover that without hassle. And since the swipe fees are money they collect at no actual cost--there's no product to produce, no actual expenses per transaction (merely a distribution of the fixed costs of maintaining the network)--they just don't worry about fraud. When you make money from air, losses aren't terribly bad.

      I've had my credit card number stolen a couple times. As long as the thieves only get your number and not your actual identity (and the card info is all they will get from breach at a POS), it's merely inconvenient. The biggest hassles are setting up all the automatic payments again and learning a new number. I have a couple cards and if I'm somewhere I worry about the system's integrity, I use the card that doesn't have any autopayments associated with it. Then if it does get stolen, there's absolutely no hassle outside of a two phone calls to the issuer: one to report it, and one to activate the new card.

      The bank doesn't care about losses, so I'm not terribly worried about it either. Of course, users of debit cards have a LOT more hassle, but that is their choice to use that financial product. If they learn to trust themselves use credit cards responsibly and pay off the bill each month, then they can enjoy these same benefits.

    2. Re:Not cans by asliarun · · Score: 4, Interesting

      On a slightly related note, there is a very nice Microsoft Research paper on password theft and bank fraud, and who actually gets affected.
      I will admit that most of what I actually thought of this subject was quite wrong.

      Linkage: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.pdf

    3. Re:Not cans by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then put your dollar bills into the machine and never worry.

      [rant]

      For Christ's sake USA, get rid of the dollar bill already. There's nothing more freaking frustrating that trying to feed *paper* money into a vending machine - Especially crumbled torn and dirty American singles. I don't know what on earth you print your nearly-monochrome money onto but man it sure doesn't survive well... Get some $1 and $2 coins into circulation and make your smallest paper bill a five.

      [/rant]

    4. Re:Not cans by Bengie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Where do you put $1 coins when at the strip club?

    5. Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      In the coin slut?

    6. Re:Not cans by mrbluejello · · Score: 5, Funny

      Make it hail!

    7. Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Where do you put $1 coins when at the strip club?

      In the slot?

    8. Re:Not cans by Rob+Bos · · Score: 5, Informative

      Never been to a strip club, but I did a quick google search and found a couple of threads on the subject.

      Two answers stood out - 1, some clubs issue coupons that you can use in place of money; the strippers just redeem them at the end of the shift. 2, use $5s, you goddamn cheapskate. :)

    9. Re:Not cans by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers

      Like any other business, you, the consumer, eventually do pay for them - in higher (and newer, more devious) fees, lower savings/CD interest rates, and higher loan interest rates.

      Don't fool yourself into thinking that you;re getting a free ride.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    10. Re:Not cans by fnj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can easily put 500$ in bills in my wallet

      Sigh. In ones and twos? I thought not. Complete red herring.

    11. Re:Not cans by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Some ticket/food/item only costs $2-3, I get 17 $1 coins jingling around in my pocket.

      This seems unlikely. No vendor would give away all their change like that. They'd give you a ten, a five, then coins.

    12. Re:Not cans by ApplePy · · Score: 4, Funny

      When I visit the States, I definitely wish they were coins.

      You are welcome to holiday in any of the other 200+ countries.

      Meanwhile, the very dumbest of the bottom of the barrel of humanity here (inner-city youths, illegal immigrants, etc) manages to visually separate Benjamins from singles, and they can't even post on Slashdot. Pretty much everyone knows that 100 > 50 > 20 > 10, etc.; those being the numbers that are clearly marked multiple times on every bill.

      So... WTF is your malfunction?

      And, just for good measure --

      Your currency is ridiculously annoying.

      Your beer sucks.

      --
      That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
  2. Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by barlevg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you figure there's one Coke vending machine per 100 people, that's 3 million Coke machines in the US alone. So certainly the scale (if we extend to worldwide) is about right.

    1. Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The 16 million number is because that's what you get when you want MAC addresses from IEEE. The other option is something like 4096 addresses and that's just dumb.

    2. Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't piss him off, or he'll show you the back of his right envelope.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Don't forget that a MAC address is 48 bits. The vendor ID portion is 24 bits - leaving 24 bits (approx. 16 million addresses) as the smallest range of addresses you can obtain if you obtain a single VID.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  3. yep vending machines by globaljustin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's for wireless enabled purchases at vending machines.

    I did an RFP for this in grad school. In our scenario the beverage company was working with AT&T to enable the wireless internet connection.

    They'll probably "partner" with other vendors of consumer goods...whatever the marketing people come up with.

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
    1. Re:yep vending machines by ahabswhale · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I believe it's for more than just vending machines. The new computerized soda fountains that have been popping up in various fast food restaurants all report back to the mother ship as well.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    2. Re:yep vending machines by bws111 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Fountains are a good bet. For instance, a certain large, well-known company that owns theme parks and resorts has recently added RFID chips to the soda cups they sell. When you go to a self-service fountain, the fountain checks if the cup is allowed to be filled. They check to see if the cup is from this location, if it is within an allowed 'free refill' time, and if it is being used too often (you must wait a few minutes before it can be refilled). No more buying a single cup and walking around all day getting 'free refills'. No more buying a single cup then giving all 8 kids a soda by pouring from the purchased cup into your own cup over and over.

  4. Not particularly massive... by nadamucho · · Score: 5, Informative

    They were allocated a single 3-byte OUI, or prefix. When you realize that 16 million OUIs were originally available, it's like making a big deal that a company was granted a /24 IP range.

  5. Freestyle fountain machines by necro81 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Coke is rolling out their Freestyle fountain dispensing machines worldwide. Each one has the ability to phone home about inventory levels, maintenance logs, and what drinks are trending where. Coke doesn't do anything small - everything they do is done on a global scale. There are 100,000 - 200,000 fast food restaurants in the United States alone. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could scale up to 16 million machines worldwide over the product life cycle.

  6. "Massive range"? by sootman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The original IEEE 802 MAC address comes from the original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme. This 48-bit address space contains potentially 2^48 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

    2^48 / 2^24 = 2^24 so OMG NOES they're getting one-sixteen-millionth of the available space!

    If 16 million other companies do this we're TOTALLY SCREWED!

    (Unless I did my math wrong or there are other things I'm unaware of, which is totally possible. I'm sure someone who actually knows about networking will either correct me, or confirm that this is a total non-story. If they wanted 16M IPv4 addresses this would be a little different.)

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  7. Re:Coke builds own NIC in machines... by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's not what happens. MAC addresses are assigned to vendors that implement products with network hardware, not just the development and manufacture. For example: I can look up any MAC address and see it belonging to Dell, Apple, Linksys, DLink, Netgear, and so on. The first two don't design and fab their own NICs. They use Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, and Realtek chips.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  8. FFS, Slashdot. by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I read: "One of the world's largest companies has need of an allocation unique identifiers for network hardware".

    Fuck, they sell 1.7 BILLION coke products every single day (their 2010 annual report, on their website FAQ too).

    That means they sell over 1000 products a day for every MAC address they just reserved. They could use them to control the various parts of the fucking production lines via Ethernet and it still wouldn't be enough for their normal, everyday usage of such things. It's certainly no "Internet of things" heap-of-crap headline.

    How the hell did this make it onto Slashdot?

  9. Minimum Mac allocation by mbone · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's a 48 bit address space. They have lots of addresses. This is the minimum allocation IEEE hands out. Lot's of companies have a /24 of Mac addresses.

  10. FFS, all I wanted was some delicious sugar water by paiute · · Score: 5, Funny

    GREETINGS, COCA-COLA CUSTOMER! PLEASE INSERT YOUR CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD TO GET STARTED WITH YOUR PURCHASE OF A DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT.
    Uh - can't I just put in some quarters?
    I AM AN INTELLIGENT INTERNET-CONNECTED VENDING WORKSTATION. I DISPENSE DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCTS, CHANGE YOUR FACEBOOK STATUS TO 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', LIKE THE COCA-COLA COMPANY, TWEET 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', SEND A PHOTO OF YOU OPENING YOUR COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT TO SNAPCHAT -
    Okay, okay! Here's my Visa card.
    THE VISA CARD ISSUER IS REPLYING THAT THERE IS SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY ON THIS CARD. IT WAS USED TO MAKE A PURCHASE IN THE AMOUNT OF FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS AND ZERO FIVE CENTS IN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, FAR FROM THE ZIPCODE ON YOUR BILLING ADDRESS.
    Yeah, I bought something off of Amazon - Oh, nevermind... here's another card.
    WHAT IS THE PIN FOR THIS CARD?
    7734
    THAT PIN IS NOT RECOGNIZED FOR THIS DEBIT CARD.
    It's not a debit card. It's an ATM card.
    I CANNOT ACCEPT ATM CARDS DUE TO FEDERAL BANKING REGULATIONS. PLEASE INSERT A DEBIT CARD.
    I don't use a debit card. They don't protect my account. It could be stolen and all the money in my account - Oh, nevermind. Do you take dollar bills?
    I AM AN INTELLIGENT INTERNET-CONNECTED VENDING WORKSTATION. I DISPENSE DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCTS, CHANGE YOUR FACEBOOK STATUS TO 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', LIKE THE COCA-COLA COMPANY, TWEET 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', SEND A PHOTO OF YOU-
    I know! I know! You already said that! You don't accept any cash at all?
    DO YOU HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT?
    Yes, unfortunately I do.
    PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME AND BILLING ADDRESS ON YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT. PRESS THE GREEN 'I ACCEPT AND AGREE' BUTTON ON THE TOUCHSCREEN AND YOUR FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT WILL BE BILLED TO YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT.
    Okay...I guess...
    THANK YOU FOR SELECTING COCA-COLA. YOUR BEVERAGE WILL BE DISPENSED SHORTLY...WAITING FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS....LOADING...CONNECTING TO FACEBOOK.API....WAITING...LOADING...
    Forget it. I should be dieting anyway.
    YOU HAVE PUSHED THE RED 'CANCEL TRANSACTION' BUTTON. ARE YOU SURE?
    Yes, I don't want a Coke anymore. Besides, I can't figure out a way to buy one even if I still did.
    DO YOU HAVE A BITCOIN WALLET?
    Look - it's starting to snow. I am going to go over and scrape some together and let it melt in my mouth. Do you want some?
    WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TAKE A SHORT FIVE MINUTE SURVEY REGARDING OUR INTERACTION TODAY? YOU WILL BE ENTERED IN A DRAWING TO WIN FIFTY DOLLARS WORTH OF COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT...

    --
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  11. Exactly how old news is this? by kasperd · · Score: 4, Informative

    The oldest version of oui.txt I could find is dated 2010. And the allocation was made before that. Which means it has been more than three years since this was news. Anybody know how to look up more precisely, when it was allocated?

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    1. Re:Exactly how old news is this? by kasperd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Anybody know how to look up more precisely, when it was allocated?

      Turns out the URL has changed over time. Knowing what the URL used to be allows looking up earlier versions.

      • http://standards.ieee.org/db/oui/oui.txt
      • http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt
      • http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/oui.txt

      The allocation was made between 2010 Aug 08 and 2010 Nov 24.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
  12. Isn't it obvious? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's a trademark thing. They just wanted MAC addresses starting with C0:CA:C0:1A.

  13. Re:FFS, all I wanted was some delicious sugar wate by Tokolosh · · Score: 4, Funny

    All I wanted was a cup of tea.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number