Now this is an exciting DEFCON! I didn’t go this year, but this talk was one of the ones I was eyeing! And it’s gone total bonkers!
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has sued three MIT students — Zackary M. Anderson ’09, Russel J. Ryan ’09, and Alessandro Chiesa ’09 — and MIT to prevent the disclosure of security weaknesses in subway ticketing systems. The students, who were working under EECS Professor Ronald L. Rivest, were planning to give a talk titled “The Anatomy of a Subway Hack: Breaking Crypto RFID’s and Magstripes of Ticketing Systems” at the DEFCON security conference Sunday. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock issued a temporary restraining order earlier today enjoining MIT students from “assist[ing] in any material way to circumvent or otherwise attack the security of the Fare Media System.”
A copy of the presentation, which was distributed at DEFCON, is available here: Defcon Presentation (PDF).
WOW! The WarCart rules!
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