Cracking Atlanta Subway's Poorly-Encrypted RFID Smart Cards Is a Breeze, Part II

McGruber (1417641) writes In December 2013, Slashdot reported the arrest of seven metro Atlanta residents for allegedly selling counterfeit MARTA Breeze cards, stored-value smart cards that passengers use as part of an automated fare collection system on Atlanta's subway. Now, six months later (June 2014), the seven suspects have finally been indicted. According to the indictment, the co-conspirators purchased legitimate Breeze cards for $1, then fraudulently placed unlimited or monthly rides on the cards. They then sold the fraudulent cards to MARTA riders for a discounted cash price. Distributors of the fraudulent cards were stationed at several subway stations. The indictment claims that the ring called their organization the "Underground Railroad."

Comments

Not counterfeit

[Anonymous Coward]

The cards were original, not counterfeit.

Real story

[linebackn]

I think the real story here is that someone in Atlanta figured out how to use a computer. :P

The REAL value of the transit system

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Atlanta should try to learn from this situation.

They found the REAL value of the transit system. The price people were willing to purchase the "counterfeit" cards is much closer to what the general public is willing to pay for "legitimate" cards and they will probably have more riders at that price and as a result, more revenue. Adjust your costs to fit this selling price instead of running things the other way around.

They can probably even learn a thing or two about the ring's distribution system.

Re:The REAL value of the transit system

[Karmashock]

mass transit is already hugely subsidized...

The "price" of a good in a market is not merely what people want to pay for it. For example, how many people would buy a yacht for 100 dollars? Probably a lot more then buy one now at its current price of about 10 million to 100 million dollars depending on how big it is... but can you charge 100 dollars to sell yachets? No... you won't even break even on the costs.

And that is a major issue in mass transit. Most mass transit systems do NOT break even after collecting all the tickets and passes. Nearly all of them must subsidize their costs with taxes. And some of them even take money from federal and state programs because the systems are not actually affordable even using city taxes without adding money from the federal and state governments.

As such, saying "hey they should just lower prices" is not really rational.

To actually establish your idea here you'd first have to float the whole system on nothing but those passes and ticket revenue. ZERO subsidization. Then you could charge a market price for those tickets.

And if the ticket revenue fell below what it cost to build and maintain the system then it would shut down for lack of funding the same way companies do that can't get enough sales to pay for operations.