Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

London Underground's OysterCard is cracked

Cory Doctorow at 8:42 am Fri, Mar 14, 2008

— FEATURED —

Book Review

The Man Who Laughs: grotesque Victor Hugo potboiler was the basis for The Joker

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
OysterCard, the smartcard used by the London Underground, has been cracked. The card has seen vastly increased use since Traport for London vastly increased the price of riding the tube and bus on paper tickets, and made the card mandatory for week- and month-long passes (for month-long passes, passengers are also required to fill in a form listing their name, address and phone number). Link

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Civlib

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

  • James David

    I wish someone would do this for Boston’s Charlie Card.

  • Elliot Cowan

    Actually, you have to hand over all your personal details to get an Oyster card at all, not just a monthly one.
    I squawked about this for weeks after I got mine when I moved to Londonium.
    You also spelled the word “transport” incorrectly in your story there…

  • MrWizzle

    @Elliot

    No, you don’t. I got mine at the beginning of January without having to hand over anything but a £3 “refundable deposit” and an initial top-up. Registration is optional and apparently safeguards the money you’ve stored on the card (not to mention enabling TFL to track your movements on the transport network, paranoia fans).

  • zuzu

    How much longer until someone cracks the Octopus card?
    Or the Shenzhen residency cards?

  • scottfree

    yes. There are so many places in London Ive never been to because they’re zone five and six. I guess this means I can give my friend her bike back.

  • Bobdotcom

    One too many instances of the phrase “vastly increased” in the commentary above…

  • Kieran O’Neill

    #3 Nonsense. The repetition in this case clearly illustrates the logical connection between the two.

    But yeah, lol, I’m pretty sure it’s been cracked for some time now already.

    The question is how long it will take the Russian mafia to start mass-producing fake ones…

  • markbellis

    The OysterCard is shucked, shurely?