Decoding the MetroCard, Part 2: Research and Past Attempts

Re:Decoding the MetroCard, Part 2: Research and Past Attempts by devy on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:00PM (#12118502)

     Despite being over a decade old, these slides 
     (and accompanying 2600 articles) still represent 
     the best publicly-available research on the MetroCard format.

Isn't that an endorsement of Cubic Transportation Systems'[0][1] security by obscurity work quite well in this case?

[0]: https://youtu.be/YSmqwJmKh2E?t=1833

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_Transportation_Systems

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Re:Decoding the MetroCard, Part 2: Research and Past Attempts by woodruffw on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:12PM (#12118535)

I think it's worth keeping in mind that that presentation (and accompanying papers) came out in the spring/summer of 2006. Google Patents didn't appear until December of that year [0], and the USPTO certainly didn't have an online search or API back then (it does now [1]).

The information was always there, but it's only become easily accessible in the past few years. To me, that speaks tremendously towards Battaglia's research.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Patents

[1]: http://assignment.uspto.gov/

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