Oyster card hack
 

On Jul 22, 9:39 pm, Adrian wrote:
Tim Woodall gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying:

(And is there
anywhere in Z1&2 where you can enter or exit without going through a
gateline?

Yes, at least one - Kensington Olympia.

Plus Finsbury Park and Waterloo W&C.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

Oyster card hack
 

Tim Woodall wrote:

Then there's sharing a card to only have one cap. But I wonder how
many people are going to make a journey, then phone their accomplice
"Ok, I'm out. Now you make the journey." It's the sort of thing some
university students might do to prove it can be done but it seems
unlikely there are many other people who will bother.

There were people who shared paper travelcards by hiding them on the system,
for instance someone who commutes from zone 6 to zone one sharing tickets
with someone who commutes from zone 1 to zone 6. I know because I saw one of
them hiding his ticket.

Oyster card hack
 

On Jul 23, 2:56*am, "John Rowland"
wrote:
Tim Woodall wrote:

Then there's sharing a card to only have one cap. But I wonder how
many people are going to make a journey, then phone their accomplice
"Ok, I'm out. Now you make the journey." It's the sort of thing some
university students might do to prove it can be done but it seems
unlikely there are many other people who will bother.

There were people who shared paper travelcards by hiding them on the system,
for instance someone who commutes from zone 6 to zone one sharing tickets
with someone who commutes from zone 1 to zone 6. I know because I saw one of
them hiding his ticket.

You may not be allowed to share travelcards, but I thought that you
were perfectly entitled to share Oyster PAYG with other people on the
same day.

I still can't see what all the fuss is about. Unless someone invents
an undetectable way of adding cash to an existing card, and actually
makes their money through selling the system to others without getting
caught by undercover police etc, what serious money can realistically
be gained by any of this?

Oyster card hack
 

On Jul 22, 8:36 pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:24:31 -0700 (PDT), "

wrote:
The easiest exploit is going to be when a few people get together to
exploit the cap. Assuming that only one person uses the card at a time
then AFAIAA technically they're not breaking the rules so long as they
actually exchange the card. Cloning allows them to skip the need to
physically swap the card but can be detected if the card is used at
two remote stations too quickly.

Er, that wouldn't work for capping as the data to perform the cap
would be stored on the card, surely, and just occasionally sent back
to a central server to ensure it hadn't been messed with?

I'm assuming they can add the necessary journey history to the cards
to keep them in sync.


The most likely clone job would be something like topping an
unregistered PAYG card up with 50 quid then making 10 copies of it.

But that's going to get flagged at the end of the day when everything
is reconciled - even assuming that multiple cards on the system with
the same serial number don't already flag things up sooner that that.

So the best hope along those lines is to take a card with just enough
money to reach the cap, clone it multiple times and then throw the
cards away at the end of the day.

Another possibility is people claiming to be tourists selling their
now finished with oyster cards for a discount[1]. "I've still got 20
pounds left on my card. I'll sell it to you for a tenner" sort of
thing. They only need to be able to fool the top up/journey history
machine once to pull that off.

Tim.

[1] The fact that tourists can't get their money and deposit back
straight away if they've used both cash and a credit card to top up
the card means I'm sure this is a common genuine situation. TfL
haven't worked out that sending a GBP cheque several weeks later isn't
very useful.

Oyster card hack
 

In message
, at
01:35:05 on Wed, 23 Jul 2008, "
remarked:
[1] The fact that tourists can't get their money and deposit back
straight away if they've used both cash and a credit card to top up
the card means I'm sure this is a common genuine situation. TfL
haven't worked out that sending a GBP cheque several weeks later isn't
very useful.

Or maybe they *have* worked out that it's very useful for them (as an
extra revenue stream).
--
Roland Perry