Want to ride on the subway for free? While there is no such thing as a ‘free ride’ in life, there is a free ride on the subway when you use an NFC hack. Obviously this is completely illegal, but researchers have no discovered that contactless fare cards in New Jersey and San Francisco transit systems can be hacked using a special Android application and NFC technology.

The researchers demonstrated the method on Thursday at the EUSecWest security conference in Amsterdam. The method is easy, according to the researchers presenting it at the conference, and it can be loaded and reset as many times as they wish.

The original testing was done in 2011, but as far as it is known the vulnerability still exists in contactless systems. While the exploit was only tested in the NJ and San Fran system, many other subway systems also use contactless cards that could be vulnerable to the hacking. This includes cities like Boston, Seattle and Chicago.

So how does this hack work exactly? The hack exploits the Mifare Ultralight chip found in disposable NFC cards, allowing the data to be read and than changed using a special Android app. That’s it.
In order to test the security in your local transit system, the hackers/researchers have released a special version of the UltraReset Android software to the public. This will allow curious users to attempt to see how secure their system is but won’t allow re-writing or resetting for free rides.

This is a pretty serious security issue, and hopefully one that transit systems take seriously. What do you think?

[ source ]

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The guys and gals at Instructable have put together an interesting rig that accomplishes exactly that. Basically, it allows you to create a third-person view of yourself by having a camera mounted somewhere away from your body. In the instance of the guy in the provided picture, it’s the usual “behind the shoulder” view that you get in quite a few video games.

Yes, this is probably a little dangerous and the folks at TSA aren’t going to happy with you at all if you decide to go through an airport checkpoint with something like this, but imagine the kind of fun you can have in your everday life. The kicker is, if you want to make things even more interesting, you can mount the camera somewhere in the room and have it communicate with your video glasses (like those from Vuzix) wirelessly. It’s like Mario 64!

Talk about an out-of-body experience!

[Crunch Gear via Instructables]

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Dave’s gone at it with a fairly simple approach, he’s connected the vibrator motor leads from the phone to a headphone jack. This in turn sends a signal to the remote start as it sets off the key fob. The entire kit cost him $71.03 and included some very cheap and basic ingredients:

* Remote Starter – $35
* Phone – $10
* Minutes – $20
* Perf Board – $0.45
* Project Box – $2.10
* Relay Socket – $1.79
* Relay – $1.69
* Solder, tools, wire, optoisolator – $Free (Had or Scavenged)
Overall Cost of project: $71.03

One thing Dave has to watch out for is that phone number getting out. Just one call will start up the vehicle. He mentioned not paying for anymore time on the phone and just using a schedule within the phones calendar to start the vehicle according to his needs.

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