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1247 points mangoman | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.702s | source
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SCHiM ◴[] No.13106003[source]
Haha yes, hackers are going to have a field day with this!! I'm sure it's good enough for users which don't actively try to game the system through technical means, but I suspect it won't stand a chance against someone who's taken the time to understand and undermine the system.

On another more on-topic note, what an awesome time to be alive! :) When I was younger concepts like this were usually paired with flying cars and space travel in cartoons, but now it's real.

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1. TulliusCicero ◴[] No.13106115[source]
Ah yes, I'm sure there'll be legions of hackers stealing groceries in meatspace for kicks while being watched by multitudes of cameras.
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2. SCHiM ◴[] No.13106328[source]
Heh your definition of the word hacker is way too narrow if you think all we're doing to sitting around behind screens all day spouting 31337 sp34k on the interwebz.

No, you're wrong. If it can be done it will be done. It's just too much reward versus the risk. Stealing this way scales too well. In a normal shop the risk of detection is variable, and therefore higher on average. Sometimes people will be alert, sometimes not, sometimes there will be guards sometimes not. Now this is different, it's all down to following the correct number of steps to get the desired results.

If you replace these two stickers, now scan this then switch this...

It'll be down to a few bits in some chip somewhere that decides how much you need to be billed. I'm sure it won't hurt adoption or even lead to a significant increase in lost merchandise, but I'm equally sure it will happen.

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3. TulliusCicero ◴[] No.13106639[source]
Sure a few will do it for fun. Most won't though, because it's still stealing things and there'll be a non-trivial chance of getting caught.
4. VLM ◴[] No.13108807[source]
The assumption is hackers will steal for their own use. The reality is they'll change store inventories of zucchini such that they appear as dragon dildos on the receipt, put 65536 rolls of TP into random victims carts, zero out other people's shopping sessions for the pure hell of it, DOS the vision systems using IR blasters during rush times, frame any customers in uniform (cops, for example) as shoplifters, add negative 2,147,483,648 cans of pepsi to random carts, sign up as username "little bobby; drop table *;" or equivalent, stick RFID tags for embarrassing products to people's shoes so they're billed over and over every time they visit, take things out of and add things to other people's carts when they're not looking, all kinds of fun.

As for plain old physical theft:

Oh here is an interesting exploit. Buy or steal a $20 "VISA gift card" register an account with that as the payment option, walk into the store, grab $500 worth of steaks/liquor, walk out.

I worked at a food store as a starving student and we had interesting problems with people loading up carts and shoving them out the fire safety doors into a waiting pickup truck and driving off. If you allow people with false ID into the building, you will get ripped off. I can assure you police are completely uninterested in video footage of shoplifters, probably due to the near infinite volume. If you can physically get away, unless you achieve felony levels of theft value, you're simply free. This might have interesting long term implications for whats for sale as fewer and fewer people have higher and higher paying jobs and everyone else is perma-poor, such as this tech might scale for 80 pound bags of rice and flour even when almost everyone is poor, but not jars of caviar and $300 bottles of liquor and rare wines and jewelry stores. Salt and pepper, sure, saffron threads probably not.