Not sure where this data is coming from but for months now I've been ordering ice cream through the McDonalds app only to find out when I get there that the machine is broken and that they can't cancel or refund the order, which ultimately results in a stressful cash refund. It's happened multiple times at various locations around Manhattan. Eventually I'll just use this method to get 30-day cash loans on my credit c…
I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
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Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't he need to pay to actually place the order though?
Not on an internal API I wouldn't think - he's just spoofing that volume of orders from registers, as if customers had walked into all stores and all ordered the same ice cream simultaneously.
> to clarify how this works: mcdonald's keeps track which locations have a broken machine, I'm merely querying for those - no order gets executed, no ice cream is actually wasted
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#73Apparently they get gross pretty fast and a lot of the staff is not especially good at cleaning them.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#74Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#75WTF is wrong with ice cream machines? It isn't just mcdonalds where they are almost always broken. I don't remember that being the case when I was a kid.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#76Just a note, the machines are not broken, they have shut themselves down for sanitary reasons. Ice cream, as a food that is very close to neutral in pH and without much in the way of preservatives, is a common source of listeria bacteria. To prevent serious health issues, the machine must be sanitized regularly. As I understand it, the process is involved, and any given McDonalds may not have a person with the time a…
The latter implies continuance of service, the former leaves that open.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably have a different definition of malicious than most of us. What you're thinking is, "Did he do this to break things at McDonald's or actively hurt them in some way?" But if he's hitting an internal API and creating a bunch of fake orders for the purpose of gathering data, that's malicious, whether or not it breaks anything on McDonald's side.
When will this guy realize that the only acceptable pastime for hackers, post-2020, is having long discussions that involve the word "policy" many times?
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps the payment doesn't go through until he arrives to pick up the order? Correct, and the order doesn't start being prepared until you hit the "I'm here" button on the app, either. I once forgot to hit "I'm here" and they were confused because, to the store, it didn't exist, so there's no harm to the stores at all here.
> so there's no harm to the stores at all here Maybe not in terms of them preparing the food ahead of time and not getting paid for it. But there's substantial potential for harm if this clogs up the ordering system and affects their ability to fulfill other orders.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#79This site is now McBroken? McDonalds must have patched their api.
Also a shame the only country it supports at the moment is the US because I could really do with checking whether the ice cream machine at the McDonalds up the road is working or not.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#80From creator[1]: “I reverse engineered mcdonald's internal api and I'm currently placing an order worth $18,752 every minute at every mcdonald's in the US to figure out which locations have a broken ice cream machine” [1] https://twitter.com/rashiq/status/1319346264992026624
Hard to imagine that lasts long...
> to clarify how this works: mcdonald's keeps track which locations have a broken machine, I'm merely querying for those - no order gets executed, no ice cream is actually wasted
Maybe in reality, the order is created, but not actually “placed” in order to query the above info? Or maybe the first tweet was simply clickbait...