Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

eta.st

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 236 posts

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#81

Post by harvey9 »

domh wrote: post #73
wodenokoto wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best tech solution I’ve yet to see is simply accepting credit/debit cards. Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder. They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout. You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides. All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

This is how the London Underground works now. Used to require an Oyster card but has worked with contactless cards for a good few years at this point.

Yes. And they still honour the daily fare cap with this payment method, and you can register your card and access an online fare statement.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#82

Post by harvey9 »

ggm wrote: post #37
tiziano88 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where else should API keys be, if they are needed by the app?

Private key should be in the trust region and set up when you make the account

I took the gpp to mean the publisher had leaked their private key by putting it in the app code when it should never have left their servers.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#83

Post by dandy23 »

reustle wrote: post #74
fuzzfactor wrote: post #49

On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many students when they traveled up and down the state. It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago. Anyway there were only very few exits and they…

I used to live in the US and currently live in Japan. We pay around $95 to go about 5 hours on a highway from Tokyo to Kyoto, for example. 3~ hours north is about $35. I think this more accurately charges us drivers for the resources we consume.

It's similar in France, maybe half that number though. It's a good system. The one's who use the highways pay for them. The highways are in a very good state in France.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#84

Post by ggm »

harvey9 wrote: post #82
ggm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private key should be in the trust region and set up when you make the account

I took the gpp to mean the publisher had leaked their private key by putting it in the app code when it should never have left their servers.

Also possible. Enough private keys in git repo to make this believable.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#85

Post by Symbiote »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #49

On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many students when they traveled up and down the state. It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago. Anyway there were only very few exits and they…

There was a discussion on a different post pointing out that maintenance of a highway is still very costly. Charging only the users, rather than all taxpayers, appears very fair.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#86

Post by Symbiote »

wodenokoto wrote: post #70
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #21

During the COVID outbreak, my public transit provider began to neglect their fareboxes (partly because everyone was boarding in the rear and didn't bother to pay fares anyway.) I noticed that the boxes were still broken and unmaintained. I put 2 and 2 together and realized that a mobile "upgrade" was coming soon, so I kept my eyes out. And sure enough, I got myself invited to participate in the pilot project with the…

The best tech solution I’ve yet to see is simply accepting credit/debit cards. Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder. They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout. You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides. All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

The London system makes a single charge at the end of each day, to reduce possible fees incurred by foreign cards etc.

I think they set up a special protocol with Visa and Mastercard to allow this.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#87

Post by totetsu »

shortcake27 wrote: post #66
netsharc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an iPhone feature: https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-iphone-xs-has-a-game-c... The Pasmo/Suica cards are intriguing, they are NFC, but also store the last few transactions on the card itself, there are also mobile apps for scanning these cards to see how much credit you have left and list the above-mentioned transactions.

I’m a huge fan of the Pasmo/Suica cards. They’re easy to obtain and easy to accept payments, so uptake is huge (if memory serves me correctly, literally accepted everywhere?). You get most of the benefits of card payments (fast, no fiddling with change, no “do you have a smaller note”), but you also maintain anonymity which is a common argument I hear against cards in Germany and why card payments are so rare there (…

They’re not quit accepted everywhere. Mostly in high convenience, small purchase places. You can get multiples of them for maximum privacy, but they’re 500yen each to purchase.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#88

Post by beAbU »

wodenokoto wrote: post #70
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #21

During the COVID outbreak, my public transit provider began to neglect their fareboxes (partly because everyone was boarding in the rear and didn't bother to pay fares anyway.) I noticed that the boxes were still broken and unmaintained. I put 2 and 2 together and realized that a mobile "upgrade" was coming soon, so I kept my eyes out. And sure enough, I got myself invited to participate in the pilot project with the…

The best tech solution I’ve yet to see is simply accepting credit/debit cards. Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder. They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout. You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides. All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

We have this in South Africa, on the service between Pretoria and Johannesburg called the Gautrain.

It works with tap cards, both debit and credit. Can even be used to get in and out of the parking by tapping at the boom gate at entrance/exit.

You can buy a special Gautrain card that uses the same hardware. But the only benefit of the dedicated card is for folks that travel frequently, as you can buy discounted prepaid fare, something like 40 trips to be used in 20 days, for half price.

Only real risk is if you carry both a credit and debit card, and mix them up during the scan in/out process. They then charge maximum fare on both cards.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#89

Post by rhn_mk1 »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #49

On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many students when they traveled up and down the state. It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago. Anyway there were only very few exits and they…

"Reverse engineering" is where you learn something about how a system works, especially nonpublic information.

What you described doesn't have anything nonpublic or learned facts. Instead, it's a cooperation to fool someone into not having to pay for service. I'm not sure if it could even be called "cracking", since that typically involves learning new facts, too. Only "exploiting" comes to mind.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#90

Post by stevekemp »

jonathantf2 wrote: post #44
nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

Nobody who cheers "mobile tickets" has ever watched a guard or ticket inspector do their job. In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs. Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing social media and…

Paper tickets are an absolute pain - I hate having to fumble around trying to find them, instead of just double clicking the power button and bringing up my Wallet. I've only ever had it checked by the barriers, I can't remember the last time I saw a conductor checking tickets on a train.

Some stations don't have barriers, which seems to correlate with tickets being checked on those routes more frequently.

(e.g. York, or Edinburgh.)

Post reply on HN