MIT Hackers Now Work with MBTA

Oh the life of a hacker. The three students, who The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority had sued for hacking into their transit system, are now working for the MBTA.

 

According to ComputerWorld.com, the students had planned to show that they had reverse engineered the MBTA's CharlieTicket magnetic stripe tickets and CharlieCard smartcards. The CharlieCard uses the same Mifare Classic RFID (radio frequency identification) technology that was cracked earlier this year by security researchers.

 

The MBTA had argued that the presentation could have caused "significant damage" to the transit system, but the students had said they had no intention of releasing key pieces of information that would have allowed people to hack the system.

 

On Aug. 19, a judge threw out the MBTA's gag order, and the case was settled on Oct. 7, but it was not publicly announced until yesterday.

 

The settlement ends the matter in an amicable way. "For professional reasons and for public interest reasons, the students wanted to help the MBTA," said Jennifer Granick, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who represents the students.

 

The announcement came late because it took two months for all parties to schedule a public announcement of the settlement, Granick said. The researchers met with MBTA technical staff on Oct. 21 to discuss their findings and are working to improve the transit authority's fare collection system, she added.

 

"I'm really glad to have it behind me. I think this is really what should have happened from the start," said Zack Anderson, one of the students sued by the MBTA.