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Hack the Pump: Rising Prices Lead To More Reports of Gas Theft (nbcnews.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
With gas prices at record highs in the U.S. in recent months, some people have turned to hacking the pump. From a report: Since prices spiked in March, police have arrested at least 22 people across the country for either digitally manipulating computers that manage gas pumps or installing homemade devices to discount their fuel, according to an NBC News review of police and local news reports.

The most common tactics aren't technologically sophisticated. Gas hackers take advantage of the fact that gas pump equipment in the U.S. is heavily standardized and largely relies on a handful of manufacturers that often don't include strong security protections. And some of the hacking tools are easily available online for purchase. While there's no formal law enforcement metric to measure the trend, 1 in 4 convenience-store gas station owners say fuel thefts have been rising since March, said Jeff Lenard, a vice president of the National Association of Convenience Stores, an industry group.
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Hack the Pump: Rising Prices Lead To More Reports of Gas Theft More

Hack the Pump: Rising Prices Lead To More Reports of Gas Theft

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  • I drive a big gas guzzling jeep.
    Off I go to find me some discounts. :)

    • Re:Thanks for the tip. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:08PM (#62717216)

      I drive a big gas guzzling jeep.

      Buying a gas guzzler hasn't been a mark of intelligence since 1973.

      • Re:Thanks for the tip. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:25PM (#62717300)

        Buying a gas guzzler hasn't been a mark of intelligence since 1973.

        The 70's brought us 5.0 liter V8s with 170 horsepower. Not our finest hour. Things have improved a lot since, now some make over 450HP. Much more fun and better fuel economy to boot. For people who have jobs and can afford fun things, anyway.

        • A 300 HP muscle car isn't even very expensive.

        • Also in the 70s the autos were so heavy that you needed a V8 just to get them to move.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            Cars today are generally heavier...or so I thought (and was mostly correct). Bit of google and...

            Cars trended towards being heavier up till ~1975 (peaked ~4000lbs) when the gas crisis pushed smaller, lighter, and less powerful cars into popularity. Then, over the years, safety, luxury, and other features have pushed the average weight back up to above the mid-70s average peak weight...despite the use of thinner body panels, plastics, etc. And of course engines are both much more efficient and significan

      • 1973 BCE? Possibly, but automobiles don't even go back *that* much in time.

      • I can get up to 28MPG (average) in my 2018 Grand Cherokee. That is way better than the 10-12 I have gotten in my older Jeeps.

        • I just did a trip to collect some stuff from storage at my parents, getting 49.5 mpg with just me in the car, and 46.4 mpg with 3/4 of a tonne of stuff in the body and a bike rack & bike on the back.

          That was disappointingly low. Were Grand Cherokees a notoriously bloated Indian tribe, who couldn't climb onto their own horses when they fell off?

      • Buying a gas guzzler hasn't been a mark of intelligence since 1973.

        for those with the means to choose a car, it's mostly a matter of taste.

    • I try to make every grocery outing an adventure. Even when going to simply buy a loaf of bread, I hitch up in my Tractomas TR 10×10 D100 and make sure that I have a heavy load of lead (I'd use depleted uranium if I could get away with it... oh, hell, let's go plutonium. Fuck the NEST teams!) in the trailer. It's like a half mile a gallon. Good times.

  • Exploits in the Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:49PM (#62717162)
    1. A remote control for the pumps easily found for sale online, enabled at the pump with the default security code.

    2. Some device installed in the cabinet to slow the meter.

    • 2. Some device installed in the cabinet to slow the meter.

      ... and cabinet opened (during off hours) using a key easily found for sale online.

      So now we have a 2 sentence summary of the whole article :-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There used to be a completely legal way to get cheap petrol in the UK.

      Back in the 1970s some special commemorative £50 coins were issued. They are legal tender but so rare that many places don't accept them. As such they used to sell on eBay for about £30.

      Thing is, most shops only offer to sell you something until they accept payment, and if they don't accept your legal tender then too bad. But petrol stations work the other way around, you fill up first and are then indebted to the

      • Re:Exploits in the Article (Score:4, Informative)

        by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @01:21PM (#62719354) Homepage

        petrol stations work the other way around, you fill up first and are then indebted to the owner. As such, they are legally obliged to accept any legal tender to settle your debt.

        Not in the USA... Here it is: pay first, fill up, get change. Even if you pay by card at the pump, it pre-authorizes an amount, and then after you fill up, it finalizes the transaction as the actual amount and releases the pre-authorization amount. All to keep people from gassing up and driving off without paying.

        • That would explain why AmiMoJo restricted his comment to the UK. Strange that something that applies in the UK doesn't apply in America - almost as if they're different countries with different laws. What a weird world!

          • Almost as if commentary on a US website about an article from a US news site about happenings in the US is US centric.

            • When was Slashdot an American site? I don't remember that being a feature, ever, and I've been around since the quite early days.

              What's that, Lassie? "Nerds" are a species only found in America?
              Who told you that?
              And the only stuff that matters happens in America (therefore, there are no global effects for anything)? Again, that's bollocks.

              Lassie, better stick to pushing Timmy down the well, you're not much good at dealing with the wider world.

      • Back in the 1970s some special commemorative £50 coins were issued.

        Did they? I don't remember that. And I was alive at the time and can remember the change of coinage that came with decimalisation. A £50 commemorative coin in the 1970s would have been most of a week's wages in one coin, so definitely not intended for circulation.

        A few years ago, I got onto a nice little deal. The Mint (the one in Wales, not the bullshit artists in Tristan da Cunha who advertise on the telly) were is

  • Probably a stupid question but (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Given that Americans call petrol 'gas' and given that actual gas prices and delivery are so much in the news, what words do Americans use about e.g. European reliance on Russian gas to be clear they don't mean petrol, or is it all interpreted based on context?

    • We call that stuff commie gas, and just burn it off at the well.

    • Americans use "gasoline" for petrol and "gas" for gas, but shorten "gasoline" to "gas".

      Kind of like BrE now stupidly only has "have got" to express "to have" and "to have received", while AmE has retained "have gotten" to highlight the distinction. Sometimes AmE is better, sometimes BrE is better...

      • Jee-zus... parsing words. Grammar is important. Know Your Shit or Know You're Shit.

        And all that.... yet, to a certain extent, it's all semantics. If you've ever studied a 2nd language, you prolly know linguistic proficiency is a tool to belittle the novices.

        • you prolly know linguistic proficiency is a tool to belittle the novices

          That's what people who can't be bothered to improve their proficiency invented to shift the blame to someone else. The rest of us just Know You're Shit.

    • Given that Americans call petrol 'gas' and given that actual gas prices and delivery are so much in the news, what words do Americans use about e.g. European reliance on Russian gas to be clear they don't mean petrol, or is it all interpreted based on context?

      Here in Canada there is natural gas and gasoline. So yeah, using "gas" for short totally depends on context.

      Given petrol is probably short for petroleum it's probably good you don't use it for any of the other myriad petroleum products.

      • Agreed. In the US you put gas (petrol) in your car and you cook on a gas (natural gas) stove. All context.

        When I hear about gas pipelines in reference to Europe/Russia, I assume natural gas. If they say "oil" I assume that's heavier liquids in one form or another. Not sure about LPG or natural gas liquids.

        • I've seen the liquid versions as acronyms primarily (LNG for liquefied natural gas for example).

        • I've never heard of a gasoline pipeline. My understanding is that unrefined oil is shipped long-distance to refineries. But the final product needs to be distributed to gasoline stations which are geographically distributed and the refined product is shipped by tanker truck. Some airports have underground gasoline delivery lines but those aren't usually referred to as pipelines, so I think the phrase "gas pipeline" is unambiguous.

      • It doesn't even get any easier in Dutch, where petrol translates to "benzine". Want to take a guess as to what benzene translates to? "Benzeen"

        It's even funnier given how little benzeen is actually in benzine. :-)

    • Natural gas is stuff that is commonly piped to houses. Often used South America too. Tank has or propane is delivered or bought and exchanged in tanks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      in the US we call that "Natural Gas" as far as petrol most of the time in the news at least in my area they call it by it's full name "Gasoline"
  • Isn't this expected behavior though? A real headline would be gas theft going down as demand goes up.

    • I suspect we can look forward to more security cam videos of idiots setting themselves on fire as they attempt to drill through and siphon gas tanks.

      • idiots setting themselves on fire as they attempt to drill through and siphon gas tanks

        Major scale idiocy too - Most modern vehicles have plastic fuel tanks, and have done for years. (By the time you've got enough fuel leaking from the delivery system to make melting the tank an issue, you're in major shit already.) Older vehicles, with metal (ie, rust-prone) tanks were generally vulnerable to a wrench for removing the ("locking") filler cap, then just syphon away.

  • That is soooo stupid.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:28PM (#62717304)

    Soo, a potential felony hacking charge with some other stuff on top on the minus side.
    On the plus side, some cheap gas, but not that much.

    Setting: You drive there in your car which has two fucking license plates, with most gas stations having cameras and your theft is in the logs of the pumping station at the very least indirectly. In addition, you likely forgot to switch off your cell phone. The mind boggles. Most criminals really are stupid.

    • Most criminals are really desperate. Poor people make decisions they believe are profitable based on illogical assumptions.

      Imagining you'll get away with credit card abuse (charging to a card not in your name), or a well photographed gas and diesel theft, in this era of ubiquitous cameras, is the stuff of faith in the improbable... it's statistically likely the offender is desperate or a man of faith. Or both.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. Being poor sucks badly and most people did not get there because they are very smart to begin with.

        I am not implying in any way this is deserved. Nobody should ever be so poor that stealing looks like a viable option. That is dark-ages stuff.

        • Being poor sucks but there also seems to be a modern dilemma where luxuries are reclassified as necessities. High-tech gas stealing is premeditated. There are alternative to purchasing gasoline such as riding a bicycle. The vast majority of people have dealt with higher gas prices via mechanisms other than stealing.

      • Most criminals are really desperate

        Are they? This sounds like an assumption. It doesn't match the criminals I've known.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The mind boggles. Most criminals really are stupid.

      On the other hand:

      Roughly 22 people caught.

      Out of how many stealing gas?
      "1 in 4 convenience-store gas station owners say fuel thefts have been rising since March"

      The American Petroleum Institute says there are over 145,000 gas stations across the US.
      25% would be over 36,000 stations.
      Each station had more than one theft, otherwise the number wouldn't be rising.

      22 out of 36000 is already low odds of being caught, and this is incorrectly assuming one theft per station reporting "thefts have been rising since M

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        There is an obvious alternative: The article is mostly speculation and/or 1 in 4 gas station owners are lying to pollsters.

      • The 22 people mentioned were specifically caught hacking the pumps. That 1 in 4 gas station figure is almost surely referring almost entirely to people driving off without paying (for those stations that don't requirement payment first) or paying with a stolen credit card.

    • Fuel theft has been a significant problem for a long time (in the UK at least) and all the ANPR and enforcement (threats) have long since proven to be of limited effect. 1 easy to find (probably biased) source: https://certasenergy.co.uk/new... [certasenergy.co.uk]

      And that was before the price of fuel nearly doubled.

      At least one source alleged this wss because the balance of offence to probability of investigation (and then, eventually, prosecution) was considered out of whack.

      So it might be stupid, but it is lucrative and folk

      • Fuel theft has been a problem in the US for a long time. However, it's getting harder and harder. Most stations now require pre-payment for the fuel and use of a credit card, at minimum, requires entering the zip code of the card holder making it hard to use stolen cards. If the station is attended (as most are), that also increases the risk of getting caught. But some thieves are still successful.

    • So ... folks steal the car, leave their phone at home (or use a burner - lol ... ironic term that one), and then hit several fuel stations in series syphoning the fuel out of the stolen vehicle between each theft and sell it on ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        If they are piling crime on crime, why not simply kill the gas-station operator, take as much gas as they want from that one and then burn it down? Sounds more efficient to me...

        • why not simply kill the gas-station operator,

          Errr, because this is not America. (Well, it may be for American users, but it's not for non-American users), You've just exchanged multiple counts of theft (each of ~£100) which would attract a few months jail time, tops (if caught) for one count of murder, which would be 15 years sentence and lifetime threat of recall to jail, plus a far more intense investigation.

          take as much gas as they want from that one

          So, you've located and obtained a tanker t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Don't give up the day job for a life of crime. You've not thought this through well.

            You seem to be sarcasm-challenged...

            • Sarcasm-intolerant, more like.

              Plus, of course, when reading comments like that on a website with a high proportion of American users, it is not obviously sarcasm. As far as the rest of the world can tell, that may genuinely be the average opinion of the "man on the Brooklyn omnibus [wikipedia.org]". "Kill first, ask questions later" is very much the way that Americans present themselves to the rest of the world.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Soo, a potential felony hacking charge with some other stuff on top on the minus side.
      On the plus side, some cheap gas, but not that much.

      Setting: You drive there in your car which has two fucking license plates, with most gas stations having cameras and your theft is in the logs of the pumping station at the very least indirectly. In addition, you likely forgot to switch off your cell phone. The mind boggles. Most criminals really are stupid.

      Erm, people aren't necessarily stupid, many are just desperate.

      This is what happens when a lot of people are kept in poverty. There aren't enough resources to police it (otherwise there will be resources to prevent poverty in the first place).

    • Most criminals really are stupid.

      But too honest for politics.

      You drive there in your car which has two fucking license plates, with most gas stations having cameras

      Which is why a lot of the time this is done using a stolen vehicle. Which you then take to some "quiet" (ie, no cameras, or neighbours) location, decant the stolen fuel into some other vehicle or tank and dispatch the stolen vehicle to hit another "gas" station. (See also phone point below.)

      and your theft is in the logs of the pumping station a

  • And the media is going goofy reporting our gas is "below" $4.00 a gallon. Ummm I'll get all excited if it gets BELOW 3 bucks a gallon. Only way that will happen is shutting down the economy again, or they start drilling & refining again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      The only reason its been around 3 bucks a gallon in recent history was exactly the shutdown, low demand means low sales. Even IF they open the taps to full tilt in the USA it will never fall below 3$ a gallon, that ship has long sailed. The entire reason I moved to the town I live in now was to cut commute mileage and reduce gas consumption as at the time it was 3.60 ish a gallon then (its currently 3.80 here right now) ... that was 2009

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        The only reason its been around 3 bucks a gallon in recent history was exactly the shutdown,

        Not really. [eia.gov]. Regular gas was pretty flat around $3.00 per gallon since 2016. Until 2021. Before, during and after the Covid shutdown. Then something happened in 2021.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ksevio ( 865461 )

          Lockdowns ended, people started driving to work again, plants that produced gas weren't running at the capacities needed. Not really any mystery.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Lockdowns ended, people started driving to work again, plants that produced gas weren't running at the capacities needed. Not really any mystery.

            But even more importantly, oil companies stopped investing. They see the writing on the wall, electric vehicles are hanging around as they're extremely practical vehicles for a good chunk of the population. Cheaper to operate, cheaper to maintain, electric infrastructure is everywhere, even though the charging infrastructure isn't, but that's a sign of things to co

    • Current price in the UK is about £1.80 per litre for unleaded petrol. That's roughly $8.20 per US gallon. Diesel is just under £2 per litre - $9.00 per US gallon. I don't think you've too much to complain about with your prices.

    • or they start drilling & refining again.

      You did know (or not - quite possibly) that the normal lifetime for an oil well is in the 5-15 years range, maybe needing a "work-over" every 5-7 years. You don't need to be continually drilling new wells to continue producing - you need to be drilling new wells to replace the entire oil fields that you've drained to the point of unprofitability. And that has a lead time of several years from seismic to production to surface, in the best of circumstances.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Briareos ( 21163 )

      ...is drilling the tank [youtube.com]

      Wanna bet the thief will also sue the company for false advertising?

      Where was the "fire protection" when he needed it most? :P

    • Actually listening to (and watching) the video, I see several points I hadn't got from previous mention of "drilling the tank" :
      • The vehicle had been syphoned before - I guess the owners fitted an anti-syphon mesh into the tank's inlet, below the reach of the filler nozzle.
      • Or else, the thief was so mind-bogglingly stupid that they couldn't get a syphon to work. Is a negative IQ technically possible, or is the parameter bounded at zero?
      • The vehicle style is a truck (whatever Americans call it), which leave

  • Americans driving such gas guzzlers that they resort to stealing petrol when it's priced less than the normal price of petrol in Europe.

    If there's a sign you bought the wrong frigging car, this is it. Try paying $12/gal. Or $10/gal since the exchange rate has tanked.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by junkname ( 8623905 )
      You have to account for the US gallon vs UK gallon sizes.

      Average UK gas prices for one gallon of gas (18th July 2022):
      USD / US gallon : $8.71 a gallon
      USD / UK gallon : $10.46 a gallon

      Still quite a bit higher than the highest spots inside the USA, but not quite as much as it seems when looking at just prices per gallon without accounting for the differences in gallon sizes.

      https://www.globalpetrolprices... [globalpetrolprices.com]

      • I did. At no point have I ever used UK gallon as a metric. Nor compared the price of gasoline in the UK.

        For the record I paid $9.6/US gallon the other day, and that's despite the EUR / USD exchange rate dropping by 20% and my country completely suspending all taxes on gasoline. I.e. We got to $10/gallon through heavy government intervention and it would have been $12/gallon normally.

  • Make the pumps pre-pay only, in-store only. It's a win-win in that you get people to come into the convenience store and probably buy something with the gas..
    • The theft described here involves tampering with the pump to get more gas than you paid for. This is on the rise and a contributing factor is likely that the counter-measures you've described are nearly ubiquitous.

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