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Keurig 2.0 Genuine K-Cup Spoofing Vulnerability
An anonymous reader writes A security researcher has released a humorous vulnerability description for the Keurig 2.0 coffee maker, which includes DRM designed to only brew Keurig brand coffe pods (K-Cups): "Keurig 2.0 Coffee Maker contains a vulnerability in which the authenticity of coffee pods, known as K-Cups, uses weak verification methods, which are subject to a spoofing attack through re-use of a previously verified K-Cup." The vulnerability description even includes mitigating controls, such as keeping the Keurig in a locked cabinet when not in use.
Also at Hackaday.
Holy fuck! These pirated K-Cups are going to hurt the whole industry!
I demand additional ineffective security procedures for my Nespresso machine. I'm completely ineffectively unprotected.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I know someone who keeps a genuine k-cup lid around and just sets it on top of the off-brand cup every time he uses his machine.
Why in the hell would anybody buy a coffee maker that uses DRM to prevent using "non-genuine" coffee?
And here you are, posting on Slashdot...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Considering the impact on the environment of pods that just ends up in the garbage there's now two reasons not to buy them.
OK, the coffee they make isn't bad, but what's wrong with an ordinary espresso machine?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Yes, it is like the inkjet printers.
If you can make an inkjet use the Keurig modules for ink, we could save a ton of money...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I can only imagine how expensive that must be. The last pair of double-D's set me back a fortune before it was all said and done. Although, they were nice.
Waste.
Keurigs one selling point is that only coffee that is wanted gets made(baring people who toss it after it gets cold). I can't tell you the number of pots of coffee I made that I have thrown out. Probably around 30%. The k cups allow only coffee that is desired to be made at the cost of extra plastic waste. Bonus you can get increased variations of coffee. ao different people can get the different flavors they want including hot chocolates and teas for those who don't drink coffee.
You can't do that with just any coffee maker easily.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Keurig coffee, with all their DRM, just adds to our waste-plastic problem and costs about twice as much as coffee you grind at home. (http://goo.gl/NiVJ8D)
Get yourself a stainless steel cup, throw some coffee in there, and use the pilfered K-Cup tag to make it all work together.
Internet of Things.
Where all manner of previously easy to use appliances and household goods come with phone-home DRM for "added value".
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
It really isn't that great of coffee. It's not bad, just a quick cup of mediocre coffee done quickly.
But the appeal has always been coffee in about 30 seconds, with only a button to push, and no cleanup.
Having both a keurig and a single serve espresso machine: in the mornings I'll go with the Keurig -- coffee's ready by the time i finish leashing up the dogs and getting ready to take them outside. If i want an actual cup of coffee to relax and enjoy though; the espresso machine wins 100% of the time.
But I think it is the other waste factor that people are more concerned about, trash generated per cup of coffee.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Considering the impact on the environment of pods that just ends up in the garbage there's now two reasons not to buy them.
OK, the coffee they make isn't bad, but what's wrong with an ordinary espresso machine?
(1) A Keurig doesn't make espresso -- its pressure is nowhere high enough. (2) Cost: if you really want espresso worth making at home, you're going to pay a LOT more than it costs for a Keurig. (Well, in the short-term anyway; if you keep buying the K-cups, maybe not.)
Anyhow, I would never have bought one of these things myself, but I was given one by a family member something like 6 or 7 years ago. She had used it, but had some trouble with hard water clogging things up, and eventually she got Keurig to send a replacement. But they requested that she remove the insert that allowed you to actually use K-cups, rather than sending the whole thing back.
The flaw in that scheme was that Keurig makes a different sort of permanent plastic "cup" that could be refilled with coffee grounds, allowing you to brew whatever kind of coffee you wanted. But in order to use it -- guess what? -- you needed to remove the insert.
Anyhow, after they had already sent the replacement, it too malfunctioned briefly, and this family member tried cleaning the old one -- and now it worked! (But obviously they didn't have the "DRM" insert to actually use K-cups with it, so they could only brew with actual coffee grounds.) Later they got the new one working again, so now they just had a spare sitting around... which was given to me.
It still works, 7 years later. I've never bought a single proprietary K-cup or even any off-brand ones. I've only ever used it to brew whatever coffee I grind at home.
I would sometimes use it for a fast cup of coffee, but eventually I grew tired of the inferior flavor and went back to a french press.
Point is -- at least with older models, you could brew with your own coffee grounds if you removed the insert and bought the special reusable thing for the grounds (which maybe cost $10 -- an amount you'd save even after a couple boxes of K-cups).
In that case, the environmental impact is really quite minimal and probably better than some other traditional home-brewing methods, since you only heat up enough water for a single serving at a time, rather than people who tend to make a pot of coffee in their drip coffee pot and then never finish the pot or let it sit on the burner keeping warm for hours.
I would rather end up with liquid coffee and coffee grounds as waste products. The plastic and mylar? Not so much.
You know, they've had ground coffee in various flavors for literally decades, it's a solved problem. You can buy the bean whole or ground.
Maybe, maybe not ... but they've had this remarkable invention called a kettle for most of recorded human history.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1. Go to your favorite sore that carries coffee makers
2. Purchase a drip, french press or percolator, or whatever type I missed as per your wishes.
3. Buy some coffee at the same store. This may come as a shock to many people, but there is a large variety of typs of coffees out there. Different grinds, or grind your own - it is amazing I tell you, must be something new. Keurig is not the only company out there. I'm partial to a brand roasted in Philly, that I purchase from of all places, a diner in Rio Grande, New Jersey. But I digress.
Brew your own fucking coffee the way we used to do it when men were men, and the sheep knew to be respectful. Enjoy it on the patio, yelling at kids to get off the lawn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And the advantage over a "generic" coffee machine capable of brewing single cups is...?
I'm not a big coffee drinker, I had a roommate with an espresso machine for a while - brewed at most two cups at a time. After brewing you throw away the grounds, rinse the strays out of the "cup", and you're good to go again. Like a cast iron pan, it's only used when exposed to germ-killing heat so you don't even have to wash it unless except occasionally to prevent buildup of unpleasantly flavored residues. And it takes what, 2 seconds longer? You'll spend a lot more than that paying for those expensive little pre-packaged coffee scoops.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A malicious attacker could substitute toxic fake coffee or hot chocolate for the real thing.
A malicious attacker could also substitute a coffee or hot chocolate that is tainted with a chemical that creates slight etchings in the surface of the coffee cup or other cup used to hold the end product. For certain types of cups, the result will be a cup that will be more likely to harbor bacterial growth than one with a smooth surface. Assuming a successful attack, the risk of illness or fatality is low for a healthy adult but it might be significant for a person with a suppressed or compromised immune system.
Recommended mitigation:
Keep people who want to kill you away from your coffee maker.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No need for a real cup of coffee if a printer can print a coffee-stained cup ring on the page.
I don't even know what you're talking about here. Up until a year or so ago, none had DRM. And you don't need to remove anything to use your own coffee grounds. I have quite a few reusable K-cup sized filters that I've been utilizing to put my own grounds in forever without modifying the machine. I've never actually met anyone that didn't have at least one -- eventually if you drink coffee, you realize how much money you could save with one of those versus the K-cup.
I use the Keurig for when I have multiple people wanting something. I like my coffee incredibly strong, so most people don't drink my french press coffee. But with the K-cups, they can get coffee, tea, whatever without me having to expend any extra effort. Makes hosting people easier than reworking my fancy coffee setup for 12-18 cups of coffee.
Coffee grounds aren't waste, find someone who gardens and give them to them. They make a wonderful soil amendment and if you have high pH soil it also help lower it some.
Time to offend someone
We have refillable Keurig coffee cups and grind our own beans. Our own setup is virtually trash free other than the empty bags of beans.
Trolling is a art,
If you have so many friends over, You're doing it wrong.
The obvious solution is to have as many Keurig coffee makers as you have visitors.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Here in Montreal some dude has a mushroom growing kit that grows on a bag filled with coffee grounds. They were the most intensely flavored mushrooms I ever tasted. I was like getting hit in the face by a boxing glove made of mushrooms.
Mostly random stuff.
Tassimo
Nespresso
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
in the Java run time environment
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
That is the old razor and blades sales model perfected by King Gillette.
Time to offend someone
I was like getting hit in the face by a boxing glove made of mushrooms.
Sounds like they were some pretty good mushrooms. were you also at a pink floyd concert by chance?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
For infringing DMCA, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, circumvention and dissemination of DRM, racketeering, leading to losses of [pinkie] One Billion Dollars [/pinkie] to Keurig.
Stand by for completely over-the-top reaction from the Establishment.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The way demonstrated in the video is a pretty ugly way to fix the problem, you have to constantly put your fake lid on top of the cup you make. Towards the back left side of the piece that lowers down there's some kind of small optical sensor that looks for the keurig border that's only on keurig cups -- if you peel the label off one you can cut out a small piece of just the border and tape it directly under the sensor -- you just have to make sure it's lined up the way it expects and you'll never have to futz with an extra lid again. Some quick scissor work and a piece of scotch tape and it's been going strong for probably around 2 months now.
This is why I used a cafetiere for the longest time.
I made all the coffee I wanted to drink at once, and the only waste was the grounds (and yes, it seems I'm wasting them, thanks for the tips about using them as soil improvement, sibling poster.
Now I use an Aeropress.
It makes better coffee, at the cost of a small circle of filter paper as waste. The grounds are much easier to deal with because it compresses them into a puck. I may even start saving them for my herb garden....
Freedom Clip: Clips onto your Keurig over the DRM sensor hole so you don't have to mess with extra foil.
https://www.gourmet-coffee.com...
Get a reusable K-cup. Then you can use whatever coffee you want and dump only the grinds (or put them into a garden). Of course, you can't do this with Keurig 2.0's DRM which is why we're sticking with our "1.0" model.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I've had better coffee from a coffee percolator than from a K-Cup. It's simpler too, if you have one with a mesh screen you don't need filters and easily rinses out if you don't leave the coffee in it all day. Else you can scrub it out with a long handled brush when it starts smelling like old coffee. (for me the percolator coffee seems to do the best job at high altitude, start boiling at about 92C for me)
Since K-Cup's can't make espresso (not enough enough pressure), no need to compare it to a proper espresso machine. It's simply an elaborate drip coffee maker. A $30 Mr. Coffee from Costco will also make a fine drip coffee. You can use expensive unbleached compostable paper filters if you want, they're still a few percent of what each K-Cup costs.
My compost pile loves used coffee grounds.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Would that be a Beowulf Keurig Cluster?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
High pH would be very alkaline. I guess you meant low pH, because it's a common myth that coffee grounds are very acidic. They are pretty near to neutral and actually get more basic as they decompose.
I just measured the pH of some coffee grounds here in my kitchen. The results ---> 6.9
Keurig K-Cups are for people who don't know how to make coffee. Where did their coffee come from and how old is it? Is it a blend or single origin? What roast is it, or is it a blend of different roasts? What's the grind? What is the temperature of the water in the machine?
I roast green coffee beans, let them rest for a day, grind the beans just right for whatever method I'm going to use to make the coffee (drip, espresso, French press), and brew with good filtered water at the right temperature for just the right amount of time. Even $tarbuck$ can't come close.
You CAN do this with other coffee makers! There are other coffee makers almost exactly like Keurig doing the same thing without DRM, there is even a standard for this so that you can buy your coffee pods from multiple vendors. They're paper pods not plastic. Some even allow using the pod or a small scoop instead, with the same machine. There is nothing whatsoever that Keurig does that another vendor does not also do.
The difference is that Keurig seems to be borrowing a business practice from HP, sell the machines cheap, sell the cartridges/pods with a big markup, and do whatever it takes to forbid the use of cartridges/pods from third parties.
The sad thing is that even with all the varieties of coffee makers that take pods and which take pods from third parties, superior to Keurig, if you hit any major department store you will only see Keurig being sold. That is the only reason it is popular.
I use a French press, beans, and a grinder. Zero waste other than the grounds (and if I had a yard, I could compost them). The grinder's a hand-cranked model, so the only power used is to heat the water.
I've been making coffee this way for years, but never thought about the fact that it's also very conservative of resources until now.
And I despise the capsule-style makers on general principles; as for Keurig--if I won't accept DRM for my music and video, I sure am as fuck not going to accept it for my coffee.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
However, overall efficiency is still higher for electric cars even after repeated transformations.
Totally off topic and likely wrong. Storing energy in a battery is wildly inefficient and when you couple the transmission and generation losses along the path from say Natural Gas -> Steam -> AC electricity -> DC Electricity -> battery -> motion there is a lot of energy lost. I'm not sure, but I'd not be surprised if you don't actually burn MORE Natural Gas going the EV route than a standard internal combustion engine would. All that transmission and conversion loss is going to really burn up a lot of energy, as will the losses of the battery which are a lot higher than you might think.
So the previous poster was right... EV's are NOT as clean as they appear to run, and don't get me started on the industrial waste they produce being made and scrapped.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The poster you replied to specifically said "an ordinary espresso machine"; from your reply ("waste") I gather that you are unfamiliar with how a typical home espresso machine works. They typically make one (or some larger machines two) cups of espresso at a time, and they use steam forced through a reusable metal cup with tiny holes in it. There is no extra coffe to get cold, there is not even a filter to toss away: just take out the cup and tap it with the metal part of the handle that twists off when you release teh cup, and the grounds fall into the garbage/compost bucket (coffee grounds make great compost). The steam means that the cup is sanitized on every use, so you don't need to wash it more than once a month or so, and measuring a couple of spoons of fresh coffee into the cup is super easy and quick.
If you are afraid that a home espresso maker is not going to make a nice "regular" cup of coffee, you might be surprised to find that if you buy some nice coffee and try it out, it will likely make a much nicer cup of coffee than your k-cup machine; the beans are the most important thing about your coffee.