Gag order lifted against MIT students as T admits ticketing flaws

August 19, 2008 03:31 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Maddie Hanna, Globe Correspondent, and Noah Bierman, Globe Staff

The MBTA acknowledged today that flaws exist with CharlieTickets that will take months to remedy after being exposed by three MIT students who hacked into the transit system's automated ticketing system for a school project.

The admission came this afternoon from a lawyer for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority as a federal judge threw out a restraining order that had prevented the students from discussing their findings. The students had outlined the flaws in a paper they wrote for a class at MIT.

US District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. lifted the temporary restraining order that had been issued 10 days ago and prevented the students from speaking Aug. 10 at a hacker convention in Las Vegas.

While he acknowledged that the information from the students could harm the T, the judge rejected the legal theory under which the MBTA had sought the order.

The MBTA filed suit earlier this month, alleging trespass and computer fraud by the students and negligence by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after a vendor spotted promises of "free subway rides for life" on a website advertising the students' presentation. The students -- Zack Anderson, Alessandro Chiesa, and R.J. Ryan -- have not been charged criminally.

Attorney Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the students today in court. She took issue with using the word "hacking" to describe the students' work, saying that they used a legal method know as "reverse engineering" to compromise the MBTA's system. Regardless, Cohn cheered the judge's decision.

"I hope it gives people comfort that they can continue to do security research without the fear that they are going to be dragged into federal court and gagged," Cohn said.

MBTA lawyer Ieaun Mahony argued unsuccessfully in court for a five-month restraining order because he said the transit agency would need that long to fix the flaws, which have been limited to the paper CharlieTickets. "The work the students have done to date has not compromised the [plastic] ChalieCard," Mahony said in an interview after the hearing.

The MBTA hopes to sit down with the students in an effort to settle the case, Mahony said.