During the DEFCON hacker convention, three MIT undergraduates have been prevented by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to proceed with their plan of releasing a presentation called Anatomy of a Subway Hack.

At the time that the authorities found out about the their plans, the students, Russell Ryan, Zack Anderson, and Alessandro Chiesa, had already scheduled their presentation which was supposed to offer the details on how to successfully break the radio-frequency ID tag-based system called the CharlieCard and used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority on its subway system. The vulnerability found by the three allows free rides for anyone who would follow the instructions offered in their 87-slide presentation.

Besides generating fare cards, the information offered in the presentation also shows how to reverse the engineer magnetic stripes on access cards. In an effort to ensure some sort of damage control, one of the slides noted: "And this is very illegal! So the following material is for educational use only."

Even though the official event didn’t take place, CDs with the slide were offered a few days ago and apparently, the information is at this point available on the Internet.

Besides calling off the presentation, the MBTA also filed a suit against the students, saying that their action represents a threat to public health or safety. One of the documents presented in court includes a testimony made by Gary Foster, chief technology officer for the transit system, who claims that without a rapid correction of the flaws presented in the presentation, the Fare Media system’s security and integrity are surely compromised.