Original photo [edjar/Flickr]

In a story straight out of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, three MIT undergraduates concocted a scheme to hack Boston’s transit payment system, the Charlie Card (no relation). The students managed to reprogram the cards to increase their credit balance, thus allowance them to ride the subway for free.

Of course, being MIT students, they decided to write up their prank as an academic paper. But the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), already stinging from such a thorough pwning, took it to the courts, citing computer fraud, and asking for time to fix the system before the paper was presented. It is also thought that an MBTA official was overheard saying "It’s not fair. I’m telling my mom."

MBTA lost. Judge George O’Toole ruled that "presenting an academic paper would not violate computer fraud laws." Go hackers.

The students, Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa, went on to receive "top marks" for their paper, from which we can conclude the following: RFID is very insecure, and MIT is awesome.

Judge backs hackers in Boston subway dispute [Reuters]

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