London Underground's OysterCard is cracked

Posted by Cory Doctorow, March 14, 2008 8:42 AM | permalink

OysterCard, the smartcard used by the London Underground, has been cracked. The card has seen vastly increased use since Traport for London vastly increased the price of riding the tube and bus on paper tickets, and made the card mandatory for week- and month-long passes (for month-long passes, passengers are also required to fill in a form listing their name, address and phone number). Link

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Discussion

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#1 posted by zuzu

, March 14, 2008 8:49 AM

How much longer until someone cracks the Octopus card?
Or the Shenzhen residency cards?

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#2 posted by scottfree , March 14, 2008 9:14 AM

yes. There are so many places in London Ive never been to because they're zone five and six. I guess this means I can give my friend her bike back.

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#3 posted by Bobdotcom , March 14, 2008 9:46 AM

One too many instances of the phrase "vastly increased" in the commentary above...

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#4 posted by markbellis , March 14, 2008 11:04 AM

The OysterCard is shucked, shurely?

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#5 posted by James David , March 14, 2008 11:39 AM

I wish someone would do this for Boston's Charlie Card.

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#6 posted by Kieran O'Neill , March 14, 2008 2:33 PM

#3 Nonsense. The repetition in this case clearly illustrates the logical connection between the two.

But yeah, lol, I'm pretty sure it's been cracked for some time now already.

The question is how long it will take the Russian mafia to start mass-producing fake ones...

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#7 posted by Elliot Cowan

, March 14, 2008 3:32 PM

Actually, you have to hand over all your personal details to get an Oyster card at all, not just a monthly one.
I squawked about this for weeks after I got mine when I moved to Londonium.
You also spelled the word "transport" incorrectly in your story there...

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#8 posted by MrWizzle , March 14, 2008 3:46 PM

@Elliot

No, you don't. I got mine at the beginning of January without having to hand over anything but a £3 "refundable deposit" and an initial top-up. Registration is optional and apparently safeguards the money you've stored on the card (not to mention enabling TFL to track your movements on the transport network, paranoia fans).