Hacking vending machines has been around a long time—remember those globe candy machines? One method of absconding with the goods from this type of vending machine relied on Scotch tape or already-chewed gum. The tape or gum was stuck to the coin destined for the candy machine. If everything went right, the coin would stay in place, and several pieces of candy or gum could be had by carefully rocking the crank back and forth.
As vending machines become more intricate so have the hacks, except for the "brute-force" approach. That's where someone—usually an irate customer deprived of their purchase—violently rocks the machine until what they are after drops out of the screw mechanism and can be jimmied out of the swinging door near the bottom.
Needless to say, that approach tends to draw attention to the perpetrator—not a good thing in highly-secured buildings. Besides, today's vending machines are likely to be bolted to the floor or each other and are much more sophisticated—possibly containing machine intelligence, and belonging to the Internet of Things (IoT).
Hacking this kind of vending machine obviously requires a more refined approach. The type security professionals working for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might conjure up, according to journalists Jason Leopold and David Mack, who first broke the story A Bunch Of CIA Contractors Got Fired For Stealing Snacks From Vending Machines. In their BuzzFeed post, the two writers state, "Several CIA contractors were kicked out of the Agency for stealing more than $3,000 in snacks from vending machines according to official documents... ."
Source: TechRepublic
Read the full Office of Inspector General report from October 2013. on Document Cloud.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:33PM (1 child)
Another use for your AR-15 [youtube.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:07PM
Or your M1 carbine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_carbine [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
You'd think they'd get a chuckle and pat on the back for their cheap stunt. Lame spy employer! Sad!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:28AM
We gave each other a chuckle as student hackers for sure. Friends showed me how to get into one of the old sandwich machines that had clear sliding doors for access to a multi-story lazy susan. Turned out that the mechanical lock was just off to the side and a simple bent wire tripped it easily.
I never bothered, had better food to eat than old sandwiches.
One stoned night they removed the sandwiches and replaced them with other items like a joint, and some white bread with 1/4 watt resistors, complete with "resistor sandwich" label.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:50PM (2 children)
While I agree it is stupidity to steal $0.50 snacks, firing these people just makes a mockery of the $T gone missing from military budgets since 2001 with no-one to blame and nothing to report. Is there no sane person that can see a path to redemption for these idiots? I can even see them going to prison while in the next room CIA drone pilots drop $M of ordnance on babies. And get free in-flight snacks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:29AM (1 child)
They wanted them gone for other reasons, the snack thefts were convenient cause.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 29 2017, @01:39AM
And the cheap bastards wouldn't share!!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by datapharmer on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:20AM (1 child)
So this is a learning opportunity. Next time turn off the port via the switch instead of being obvious and unplugging it from the wall. Is it really their fault the machine chose to give them snacks when the cards had no value? Shouldn't the machine just had said no sale? Was there a sign saying do not unplug from Ethernet or risk losing your job?
Seriously though, was there really a random vending machine plugged into the CIA's network? Boy I hope that is a totally separate network given it is such an obvious vector for network intrusion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:45AM
Well let's keep it real, if you think you weren't stealing when doing shenanigans this then you need to in a much higher pay-grade.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:28AM (3 children)
I think it's funny they were ripping off the vending machine. For some reason, who they are and what they were doing... just makes me laugh. I bet they were stoned.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @01:22AM (2 children)
Unlikely, since they can't employ someone who's taken what the feds see as an illegal narcotic substance... Why else have the TLAs been having trouble recruiting hacker talent? Between that and the fact that any of the really good hackers (not posers like these) wouldn't be caught dead working for the feds or wouldn't qualify for security clearance the TLAs are in for some trouble in the next 20 years or so when their current members start retiring...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @04:31AM (1 child)
Its been my experience that every really good creative person I have ever known had his way of doing things.
When placed under someone else with "leadership" skills, the creative person would have to be fired for insubordination of one sort or another.
Creative people by their very nature tend to think outside the box, whereas every management team I have ever known would define the box, and anyone going outside it was reprimanded.
Based on observations of who is paid more than who, and who has the power to fire who, I draw the conclusion that those who can keep things from getting done are a helluva lot more valuable than those who do things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @02:14PM
The really creative people can build the idiot up, and up, and up, and then finally deflate the big headed sumbitch, with an audience watching.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 29 2017, @01:07AM (1 child)
Not hacking. I find it laughable the CIA would fire these presumably highly trained "hackers" for stealing $0.75 cent bags of fritos.
My guess is, the CIA has hacked all they can hack and needs to cut back, when word came for volunteers these suckers stayed put while everyone else took a step back.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:08PM
If they were fired for stealing $0.75 bags of Fritos, they were fired for stealing (the equivalent of) FOUR THOUSAND of them.
There's being clever and figuring out a way of hacking a vending machine. Then there's using that knowledge to steal $3,000 in snacks. If these clowns had just done a proof of concept and taken a couple Snickers bars as a lark, they'd have probably received a "ha ha, but seriously don't do that again" type of response. The fact that they went on to steal thousands of dollars of merchandise indicates a serious lack of judgement and morals and I'd be firing them in a hurry too.