Injunction to Silence MIT Student Hackers Backfires

Aug. 12, 2008— -- A federal court order that prevented three MIT students from telling a hackers conference how they were able to break into Boston's subway fare collection system has backfired.

The injunction was meant to block discussion of how the students figured out how to evade the comuter system's security to change a $1.25 fare card to a $100 fare card.

Despite the court order -- or possibly because of it -- their 87-slide presentation that they were not allowed to talk about at last week's Defcon convention can now be studied by fellow hackers online.

Computer security experts say the attempt to gag the alleged hackers has boomeranged -- again.

"Every single time, harassing the researcher ends up spreading the research," said Dan Kaminsky, a computer security consultant for Seattle-based IOActive, Inc.

MIT students Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa were scheduled to present their "Anatomy of a Subway Hack" Sunday at the popular Las Vegas hackers convention. They had already received an A on the project from their professor at the Massachussets Institute of Technology.

Their trip to the podium, however, was blocked when they were served with an injunction obtained by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ordering them not to talk about the flaws in the MBTA security system.

But, not only had the presentation already been distributed at the Defcon convention, it was entered into public record when the MBTA filed its complaint. In the blink of a mouse click, the slides were posted on the Internet and hackers were shaking their heads at the MBTA's attempt to block discussion of the information.

"The bottom line is independent security research is how we get more secure networks," Kaminsky said. "But because anyone can just say anything, the way we differentiate what's true from what's not is to actually show the details that can be independently verified."