Defcon 16, which drew an audience of 9,000 people to Las Vegas over three days, is over — but the focus remains on a trio of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who stole the spotlight at the world’s largest hacker conference.
MIT students Zack Anderson, Alessandro Chiesa, and R.J. Ryan are still blocked from revealing how they found a way to ride the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s subways free. They used weaknesses in the MBTA’s Charlie Card and Charlie Ticket Fare system.
A restraining order stopped the trio from discussing the MBTA vulnerabilities at Defcon.
The students, who first offered to help the MBTA fix the problems, obeyed the restraining order. But printed materials for their presentation were distributed to conference attendees and slides of the presentation are on the Internet.
In court filings, security consultants said the materials and slides are not enough for hackers to tap into the MBTA’s system.
Even though Defcon is over, Massachusetts officials still want to block the students and plan to ask the court to keep the restraining order in place.
Marcia Hofmann, an attorney for the students provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the restraining order violates her clients’ First Amendment rights. EFF, based in Washington, D.C., wants the judge to lift what it calls an “unconstitutional gag order.”
“What we decided to do was to file a brief to lift the gag order on the MIT students,” said Rebecca Jeschke, an EFF spokesperson. “We certainly hope that the students are going to be able to talk about this research, and we believe this is an improper restraint on free speech.”
Computer scientists and academics from Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University and UCAL Berkeley signed a letter objecting to the court’s action. The letter says such restraining orders could have a “devastating…