CallABike hacked by mischievous Germans
It started as a crunchy, environmentally-friendly service called CallABike that allowed German city-dwellers to rent bikes and leave them locked wherever when done. It ended as an IT war that has resulted in hackers turning the rental bikes into HackABikes with backdoor access for a select few. The hackers were so intent on gaining free access to these things that they abused several bikes to the point of paying for them until they figured out how to re-flash the EEPROM. Now that they know how to do this, they claim they have hacked roughly 10% of the 1700 rental bikes in the city of Berlin. The backdoor code supposedly allows them to rent the bikes for free. As it should be. Free bikes. For hackers. Yeah.
[Via Slashdot]
