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Security Researcher Gets $12,000 In Parking Tickets After 'NULL' License Plate Trick Backfires

Accepted submission by MostCynical at 2019-08-16 01:49:20 from the null not <null> dept.
Digital Liberty

Forbes [forbes.com] reports that a security researcher in California registered the vanity plate "NULL," partly for fun and partly in the hope that this spoofed the system into returning errors whenever his plate was seen.

Instead he received more than $12,000 in fines, as his plate became a dumping ground for erroneous data records.

Every single speeding ticket for which no valid license plate could be found was assigned to his car. The Los Angeles police department eventually scrapped the tickets but advised the man to change his plates, or the same problem would continue to occur. In response, the man has apparently said: "No, I didn’t do anything wrong," insisting to his Def Con audience that, whatever happens, "I won't pay those tickets."

Also covered in the Guardian. [theguardian.com]
 


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