The Berlin Hacker community sure has too much time: "Hack a Bike"

[Kellanved]

The customer calls the CallABike control center and transmits the four digit bicycle number via touch-tone. Another four-digit number, the rental code that opens the bike, is then submitted by the control center. The customer gets a verification call after his initial transmission which he doesn't have to pick up. The last four digits of the calling number are the rental code again.

From now on you have to pay six Eurocents per minute (customers with a discount card issued by the german train company Deutsche Bahn only pay four cents). The bike can be parked and locked while shopping or visiting a restaurant by selecting 'don't return bike yet' in the menu of the lock box at the bike's rear wheel and opened again with the issued rental code you received initially - this procedure can be repeated indefinitely. The bike meter keeps running of course.

Returning the bike is easy as well: the customer simply has to lock the bike and select 'return bike' on the menu - the bike now gives you the return code, which you have to submit to the control center via phone, to prove that you really locked the bike. Additionally, you have to leave the address of the street corner where you parked the bike on the answering machine. This ends the period of rental.


"...There are of course other people, which have, for sportive reasons, tried to test the robustness of the hardware or the electronic principle of the built-in microchips and processors. They tried their luck with screwdrivers and usual ordinary allen-wrenches. they even tried to use a crowbar, a sledge hammer or a motor angle grinder. or totally smart: with a laptop and some decrypting-tools, as well as some trick questions to the maintainance staff. but without luck!". again reth is smiling, who once took the first trip on a green puky-bike and looks at himself no more as a postmodern urbanite than as bicycle freak. he smiles and says: "this technology makes us to the premier station-independant city-bike-sytem. the code is unbreakable and we are really proud of"...

...
http://www.ccc.de/hackabike/

I guess everybody here knows what happens, when a company makes such a statement :evilgrin: