Presented at
DEF CON 31 (2023),
Aug. 10, 2023, 10 a.m.
(45 minutes)
Who likes paying to ride the subway? Sure, you could hop the fare gates, but that can be athletically challenging and simply isn’t cool enough for our tastes. What’s a mischievous and miserly rider to do, then? Hack the fare system of course!
In this talk we'll walk you through how we, four high school students and cybersecurity noobs became the first to fully reverse engineer Boston’s CharlieCard fare system and earn ourselves free rides for life… or at least until the system gets fixed, whichever comes first.
We’ll start by exploring the trials and tribulations of exploring the hardware behind the CharlieCards. Next, we’ll dive into the emotional rollercoaster of reverse engineering the black box that is a transit card system older than us. We’ll then explain the process of disclosing our findings to a government agency without having to hire a legal team. Finally, we’ll show you a demo of some of the tools we made, including our own portable fare machine!
By the end of our talk, regardless of whether you’re an avid RFID hackerman, or a complete noob, we’ll leave you with useful reverse engineering strategies, tips for working with a government agency, and if nothing else, a fun story.
REFERENCES:
Andersen, Zack. Anatomy of a Subway Hack. 10 August 2008, https://file.wikileaks.org/file/anatomy-of-a-subway-hack.pdf.
Bray, Hiawatha. “Your CharlieCard can be hacked by an Android phone, MBTA admits.” The Boston Globe, 8 December 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/08/business/your-charliecard-can-be-hacked-by-an-android-phone-mbta-admits/?p1=HP_Feed_AuthorQuery. Accessed 18 April 2023.
“CharlieCard.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CharlieCard. Accessed 18 April 2023.
Courtois, Nicolas. “Hacking Mifare Classic Cards.” Black Hat, 21 October 2014, https://www.blackhat.com/docs/sp-14/materials/arsenal/sp-14-Almeida-Hacking-MIFARE-Classic-Cards-Slides.pdf. Accessed 18 April 2023.
iceman001. “RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3: The Iceman fork of Proxmark3 / RFID / NFC reader, writer, sniffer and emulator.” GitHub, https://github.com/RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3. Accessed 23 April 2023.
“nfc-tools/mfcuk: MiFare Classic Universal toolKit (MFCUK).” GitHub, https://github.com/nfc-tools/mfcuk. Accessed 23 April 2023.
“nfc-tools/mfoc: Mifare Classic Offline Cracker.” GitHub, https://github.com/nfc-tools/mfoc. Accessed 23 April 2023.
Rauch, Bobby. “Operation Charlie: Hacking the MBTA CharlieCard from 2008 to Present.” Medium, 8 December 2022, https://medium.com/@bobbyrsec/operation-charlie-hacking-the-mbta-charliecard-from-2008-to-present-24ea9f0aaa38. Accessed 18 April 2023.
Presenters:
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Noah Gibson
- Hacker
A soccer fan and web developer. In his free time he enjoys kicking a ball, drawing, and programming.
-
Scott Campbell
- Hacker
A heathen who writes things in Bash, holder of a fishing license in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the proud angler of several minnows. Refuses to learn Rust even though it is better than his silly little non memory safe languages in every way.
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Zachary Bertocchi
- Hacker
He holds a learners permit, is a seasoned fare machine maker, and even graduated 11th grade! He has successfully made it to the ripe old age of 17, and is an enthusiastic 3D modeler.
-
Matthew Harris
- Student at Medford Vocational Technical High School
A 17 year old and lead hackerman of the group. He likes breaking stuff and doesn’t take kindly to being told what to do. He’s a proud (and maybe annoying) neovim and Linux user, knows how to ride a bike (without training wheels), and is a very opinionated Rustacean despite barely knowing how to use the language.
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