Judge zips MIT students' lips on mass transit fare exploits

Back in the day, young hackers used easy exploits to trick phone companies into giving them free long distance calls. These days, they use easy exploits to trick mass transit systems into giving them free rides. Loopholes in fare card RFID chips and magnetic strips employed by many transit systems across the US are not unheard of, but three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, along with MIT itself, have found themselves the subject of a lawsuit after researching the vulnerabilities. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) filed a lawsuit after the group planned to present their findings about an exploit in the MBTA system at DEFCON 16, and over the weekend, the three were ordered by a federal court judge to cancel their presentation.