German Rent A Bike scheme hacked

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

I was surprised to see a similar "bike rental via mobile phone" bike at
Parson's green a little while ago. Are there many?

pk

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

But why? Its a hell of a lot of effort to crack a basically well
designed system and as they say, they could have bought several bikes
for the man-hours involved. I guess its one of those "because we can"
reasons.

Tony

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

--
Roger Thorpe

My email address is spamtrapped. You can work it out!

Tony Raven said:

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

But why? Its a hell of a lot of effort to crack a basically well
designed system and as they say, they could have bought several bikes
for the man-hours involved. I guess its one of those "because we can"
reasons.

Because it was a neat hack. It isn't about the money, or the effort,
but the egoboo.

--
Andy Leighton => [email hidden]
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

Roger Thorpe said:

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

Happy to oblige Roger. If you'll just let me have your address and
details of the kind of lock you have on your shed I'll get the details
up straight away.

FFS.

--

Call me "Bob"

"More oneness, less categories,
Open hearts, no strategies"

Email address is spam trapped, to reply directly remove the beverage.

Roger Thorpe said:

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

They're not stealing the bikes, but they are of course stealing the
rental time on them. Now that they've published the hack the rental
company shouldn't have much trouble defeating it. Keeping quiet about
it would arguably have been more sinister.

--
Dave...

Roger Thorpe said:

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

Your wish is my command:
http://thirdrate.com/misc/krypto.mov

Tony ;-)

"Tony Raven" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Roger Thorpe said:

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

Your wish is my command:
http://thirdrate.com/misc/krypto.mov

And on the topic, they are way behind their schedule.

" Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to send UPS call tags to our lock
exchange participants in Canada and Europe. We have been experiencing
technical issues with the international software used to generate these call
tags, but we hope to have the issues resolved within the next two weeks.
Once we are able to do so, we will work to issue call tags rapidly, to make
up for the time delay. "

in message <[email hidden]>, Roger Thorpe

(') said:

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

I have to admit that was my reaction to this brainwave when it turned up
on Slashdot yesterday. Take a scheme which has genuine public utility
but pretty marginal economics (rental bikes); wreck the economics of
the scheme in order to show how clever you are; gasp with surprise as
rental bikes disappear from your towns and cities so you are no longer
able to use them - hacked or unhacked.

Very clever indeed.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Just as defying the law of gravity through building aircraft requires
careful design and a lot of effort, so too does defying laws of
economics. It seems to be a deeply ingrained aspect of humanity to
forever strive to improve things, so unquestioning acceptance of a
free market system seems to me to be unnatural. ;; Charles Bryant

On 22/12/04 12:03 pm, in article
[email hidden], "Simon Brooke"

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Roger Thorpe

(') said:

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

Oh that's lovely, would you also post a link to a site giving
instructions for thieves to get into my bike shed and take the lot?
and if not how would that be different?

I have to admit that was my reaction to this brainwave when it turned up
on Slashdot yesterday. Take a scheme which has genuine public utility
but pretty marginal economics (rental bikes); wreck the economics of
the scheme in order to show how clever you are; gasp with surprise as
rental bikes disappear from your towns and cities so you are no longer
able to use them - hacked or unhacked.

Very clever indeed.

I'd agree with that in principle. My reaction was a) a cool bit of reverse
engineering. b) irresponsible and criminal.

However, m'lud, in mitigation, they did point out that they had hacked 10%
of the bikes and the magic codes were not general public knowledge. As a
maximum of 1% of revenue could have been lost it is not turning the project
into a complete disaster.

It looked as if a minor oversight by the developers left a loophole (not
enabling write protection on the EEPROM IIRC). I presume this would be fixed
in the revised version.

...d

Tony Raven said:

Call me Bob said:

http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/index_en.html

But why? Its a hell of a lot of effort to crack a basically well
designed system and as they say, they could have bought several bikes
for the man-hours involved. I guess its one of those "because we can"
reasons.

'Because you can't' was cited as a reason. At the introduction an
offical stressed that the system couldn't be hacked.

--
---
Marten Gerritsen

INFOapestaartjeM-GINEERINGpuntNL
www.m-gineering.nl

Tony Raven popped their head over the parapet saw what was going on and
said

Quoted message said:

Your wish is my command:
http://thirdrate.com/misc/krypto.mov

Is it just me/my system, I can't get this to work
in Firefox it seems to just sit there with a Q in a box
in Internet Explorer after a while the Q is replaced
by a piece of torn film with a Q on it.

--
yours S

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione

soup said:

Tony Raven popped their head over the parapet saw what was going on and
said

Quoted message said:

Your wish is my command:
http://thirdrate.com/misc/krypto.mov

Is it just me/my system, I can't get this to work
in Firefox it seems to just sit there with a Q in a box
in Internet Explorer after a while the Q is replaced
by a piece of torn film with a Q on it.

There are working version on the web, but in line with the sentiments
expressed about publicising the "how to hack a German rental bike" link,
I chose one which did not blatantly show how to open a U-lock in 10
seconds. If you look carefully there are hints on where to look.

Tony