The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

Re:The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets by The_Colonel on Monday June 24, 2024 @03:30AM (#40773356)

> Your ticketing system cannot assume tickets in any form cannot be replicated- they can be and if you introduce such a vulnerability in your system, you will lose revenue

Yes, the question is not whether such system would be abused, but how much. But this is in the end what businesses care about.

Will QR codes be abused more than NFC chips? Likely yes.

Will it produce a larger financial loss than the cost of the NFC chips?

Can I mitigate these losses by a centralized validation system (each terminal needs a network connection with low latency guarantees)? Sure, but how much will it cost?

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Re:The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets by stavros on Monday June 24, 2024 @04:23AM (#40773626)

A centralized system is how tags work already, so you can't toss your ticket to your friend behind you and have them reuse it.

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Re:The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets by The_Colonel on Monday June 24, 2024 @05:30AM (#40773992)

These NFC chips have counters to deactivate themselves after the allocated number of trips has been reached.

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Re:The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets by hgomersall on Monday June 24, 2024 @07:08AM (#40774583)

40 years ago we had a read-write system based on mechanical trimming of a piece of card and a physical time stamp[1]. It's absolutely possible to roll out a system to keep track of journeys that doesn't require fancy embedded ICs.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/uktvads/videos/kerching-a-saverstri...

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Re:The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets by rswail on Wednesday June 26, 2024 @01:58AM (#40796854)

NFC tickets have "antipassback" features, eg, stores the last tap so you can't "toss your ticket to your friend behind you".

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