Aussie Researchers Crack Transport Crypto, Get Free Rides 88
mask.of.sanity writes "Shoddy customised cryptography by a state rail outfit has been busted by a group of Australian researchers who were able to replicate cards to get free rides. The flaws in the decades-old custom cryptographic scheme were busted using a few hundred dollars' worth of equipment. The unnamed transport outfit will hold its breath until a scheduled upgrade to see the holes fixed."
Re:This message brought to you by... (Score:5, Insightful)
So shoddy that it worked fine for "decades". As one of the researchers said - it was designed before he was born.
Even if a few people had previously worked out their way around it, they could hardly mass-market their cloned cards on the market, and thus the number of users was always going to be rather limited - and probably not worth replacing the current system to deal with.
Now technology has got to the point where the average person could abuse the system, so I guess the system will get an upgrade soon.
Re:Happening everywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with these companies mostly is that they think they've come up with better cryptographic security than tried and tested solutions, which is pathetic.
FTFY.
Re:Link to the presentation (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost guaranteed that the rail systrem is the City Rail [cityrail.info], the NSW rail system. Their ticketing system [wikipedia.org] is a nightmare, and has been the subject of multiple botched upgrades over the last couple of decades, costing millions of dollars. The latest plan is to upgrade to London's "Oyster Card" technology (renamed Opal card), but I'll believe it once I see it. The current tickets are just a piece of cardboard/plastic with a magnetic strip. Trivial to read, and most likely (as has been found out) trivial to decode.
In fact, when you do the numbers, it would be cheapest for the NSW government to abolish ticketing all together. The money saved on the (absence of a) ticking system and the reduction in road use would exceed the current revenue from tickets.
Re:Government & Stealth Malware (Score:4, Insightful)
"Nobody Seems To Notice" I guarantee to you that someone noticed and has been exploiting it for a while now. I know guys that have cracked the Chicago system for years now, wait... for over a decade now. Maybe Chicago has updated their ticket system, but I doubt it. Municipalities dont care if a system is cracked until it is widespread abused. If only 400 people in a city the size of Chicago are getting free rides, they dont even show up as an accounting anomoly. Imagine how many in NYC have figured out it's holes and are exploiting them.
People notice and people take advantage of it.
Re:Presentation Slides (Score:5, Insightful)
The slides do mention, that they have modified some details, probably as part of a responsible disclosure. But I suppose the sort of methods used and the strength of the encryption does correspond to the original version.
But as so often before, people are using "encryption" when it isn't what they need. 90% of the time where people use encryption, what they really need is integrity, which is not achieved through encryption but rather through message-authentication-codes or digital signatures. Encryption without integrity is rarely a good idea. If the integrity of the data on these tickets had been protected, there would be no need for encryption in the first place. After all, the plaintext version of the data is probably even printed on the ticket.