Hacking a parking ticket system • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacking a parking ticket system

#61

Post by wbsgrepit » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 12:32 AM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #27

mabbo wrote: post #19

A friend of mine in college did this, but it was even simpler- there was no barcode, just a number that increased by one for each ticket sold. He went the entire year just making his own to avoid paying $3 per day. Just take the last three days tickets, increment by the average difference, print and display. When they caught him (he parked in the wrong lot or something) he admitted everything, paid $80, and offered t…

A much simpler "hack" occurred to me recently. Suppose you wanted to store your car for a long time in a gated garage that also holds ZipCars. Drive your car in and take a ticket as normal. When it's time to leave, book a ZipCar for one hour. Grab its parking pass and use it to exit the garage with your car. Park on the street nearby, walk the pass back to the ZipCar. Are there typically countermeasures in place for…

There are protections to this type of abuse in just about every comercial parking system -- so much so it is not even listed in advantages/features for most of their marketing materials. It is commonly refereed to Single Entrance Gate or Stateful Egress; basically the card is tracked in a stateful database and is either in use (it has been used to enter but not yet to exit) or not in use (it has exited since its last entry). If you attempt to use the card for entry when it is in the "in use" state it will deny and log the action.

Edited to add: For the next common "game" on this line "why dont you just walk past and card swipe exit" you will note the cameras positioned at the card terminals at all of these lots for this issue. Basically they will have a record of: your license plates for the entry/exists (the sipes and video systems have timecodes that can be matched) and of your person walking by on foot to trigger the exit state.

Re: Hacking a parking ticket system

#62

Post by jacobush » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:19 PM UTC

wbsgrepit wrote: post #61

superuser2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much simpler "hack" occurred to me recently. Suppose you wanted to store your car for a long time in a gated garage that also holds ZipCars. Drive your car in and take a ticket as normal. When it's time to leave, book a ZipCar for one hour. Grab its parking pass and use it to exit the garage with your car. Park on the street nearby, walk the pass back to the ZipCar. Are there typically countermeasures in place for…

There are protections to this type of abuse in just about every comercial parking system -- so much so it is not even listed in advantages/features for most of their marketing materials. It is commonly refereed to Single Entrance Gate or Stateful Egress; basically the card is tracked in a stateful database and is either in use (it has been used to enter but not yet to exit) or not in use (it has exited since its last…

At our place there are also some kind of car detector, presumably magnetic coils in the ground. You can't walk past.

Re: Hacking a parking ticket system

#63

Post by legohead » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:22 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #57

legohead wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think you got that backwards, considering those with cars are the ones paying extra fees (+tickets), thus subsidizing the rest of the students for whatever the college spends the funds on. Second statement needs a source, and regardless it isn't a valid reason. Colleges don't decide how adults live their lives.

Parking spaces are not free. In city's they generally cost 3+ $ a day in upkeep and opportunity costs. Also, collages accept students younger than 18 which are not adults and legally can't be treated as adults.

I'm very interested in the upkeep cost - do you have a source for that?

Re: Hacking a parking ticket system

#64

Post by Retric » Wed, Nov 11, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC

legohead wrote: post #63

Retric wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking spaces are not free. In city's they generally cost 3+ $ a day in upkeep and opportunity costs. Also, collages accept students younger than 18 which are not adults and legally can't be treated as adults.

I'm very interested in the upkeep cost - do you have a source for that?

"A 1996 survey found that commercial parking operating expenses average about $500" per year. Construction costs Dallas $13,281 to New York $20,326 av $15,552. http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0504.pdf

However, opportunity costs bump that as for example it lowers the density of the area.

Re: Hacking a parking ticket system

#65

Post by abustamam » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 8:05 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #58

legohead wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refused to buy a college parking sticker. I pay tuition to go to the school, why do I have to pay to park there? Luckily, I was a night student, so I would park in the visitors parking and set up my classes so I would get out at about the same time the night crew got off (something like 9pm). I even spent a couple semesters waiting in the parking lot an hour after class. I would read a book, program, or study for t…

> I pay tuition to go to the school, why do I have to pay to park there? Because "parking a car on campus" and "receiving an education" are different and only tangentially related things; maintaining parking spaces for people who want to do the former is an expense that is not born in accommodating the people who do the latter without the former, so those who wish to do both should pay more than those who wish to onl…

I disagree. My school had a gym that was "free." It was "free" because it was included in our school fees.

"Going to the gym" and "receiving an education" are different and only tangentially related things; maintaining gym facilities are probably much more costly than maintaining a parking system, even if you include "meter maids."

If the school is able to maintain an entire gym, ripe with an indoor track, basketball court, swimming pool, not to mention the (non-free) classes that go along with it, without charging those who take advantage of such facilities (or, put another way, subsidized BY those who do not take advantage of such facilities), I think the school could do without charging students for parking. Visitors, sure; but students?

And there are plenty, plenty of services that schools offer for "free" because they are included in the tuition, that many students don't "take advantage" of (read: don't need/want).

For me, I'd like to be able to curate the benefits I get from the school. No, I do not want to get free condoms from the health center, but I would like free parking. I do not smoke so I do not need free nicotine patches, but I would like to go to the gym.

Of course this is a life long in my past, but it still irks me how many students are forced to learn how to game the system like this because they have to pay for parking. Perhaps not forced, but sometimes it's just not financially feasible for a zero-income college student to pay $9 a day to park on campus.