Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Hotel Hacking

This Wired art­icle showed up on Slashdot this morn­ing — about Adam Laurie, chief secur­ity officer of London secur­ity and net­work­ing firm ALD. Using a laptop, infrared trans­mit­ter and TV tuner, Laurie was able to access premium hotel TV con­tent for free, as well as a raft of other good­ies that he shouldn’t have been able to look at. Yay.

“Laurie first dis­covered the vul­ner­ab­il­ity when he was “muck­ing about with hotel TVs to get the porn chan­nel without pay­ing for it.” He was able to bypass TV billing menus by using his laptop to tune in to the premium con­tent being broad­cast from backend sys­tems. He didn’t have to pay for the con­tent, because the sys­tems didn’t know he was watch­ing it.”