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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [buzzfeed.com]. 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 [techrepublic.com]

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