666
Detroit man steals 800 gallons using Bluetooth to hack gas pumps at station
(www.fox2detroit.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
666 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
59632 readers
2834 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
All the pumps I've seen have a physical key protecting them too. They're supposed to unlock it in the morning and lock it when staff leave for the night. I'd guess these stations didn't do that?
From everything I know about locks in important places, all pumps probably use the same key. You can probably buy that key online. I know this is true for elevators and those boxes for entering buildings, and Crown Vic police cars (and the taxis they've become after being sold), and many other things.
do you mean doors ?
I wish he meant doors 😂
Knox Box maybe
He likely means card readers.
In buildings in some cities, entry ways for big buildings often have an emergency access box somewhere near the door. If police or the fire department need to gain entry, they have a master key that will let them access the lockbox and the lockbox will contain keys to the door.
It's a lockbox that is mounted near the door that contains a key to said door or an override used by emergency services such as the fire department. The boxes are all keyed the same.
I can't think of the term for them, but they have a keypad and other buttons to call in and unlock the door, often along with things for postal and emergency services to get in if required.
Lol this is not true for crown Vic cop cars at all. I used to own one. They have car keys just like anything else from the era
Yes, they do have car keys. They're all keyed to the same key.
https://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=1516023
It's not all the "same" key like you make out out to be. Yes it's a fleet vehicle, and yes all vehicles in the same fleet may have the same key. But no, not all ignitions of all Vic cop cars are not the same at all.
Now you're just being pedantic. Sure, not every one of them used the same key, but each municipality used the same key for their vehicles most of the time. One of then in particular was very common.
It's not as simple as just buying a key online like you make it out to be. This is not a vending machine that has a universal key that works for pretty much everything, the keying on a fleet can be the same, but it's just like any other car key. Some fleets had wildly different keying, you'd have to go through 20 plus keys before you even got something that was probably similar enough to even start the ignition.
I don’t know about that part. Just that it was all over the news when it happened here and I later read about the details as to how they did it.
I would have assumed the makers of the pumps would had put into them a little tighter security but then again look at some of these password and other web hacks we routinely see.
There's a convergence of issues. First, and probably foremost, users are idiots. So it has to be able to be operated by a 5 year with a learning disability. Second, implementing security costs money up front. It is cheaper to let the customer deal with the fall out, then do damage control on the cheap, and keep going. Third, users can't be assed to access things that a 5 year old with learning and physical disabilities and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand can't access. These are all typical issues stuff is engineered towards. This is why you see this same basic issue crop up over and over again.
You'd be surprised how many times "good enough" is considered "good enough" when it comes to IT and security, even when it's really the bare minimum.