road toll transponder hacked

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:49:20 +0200
Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 12:16:23PM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> 
> > Finally, the transponders may not matter much longer; OCR on license
> > plates is getting that good.  As has already been mentioned, the 407
> > ETR road in Toronto already relies on this to some extent; it won't
> > be too much longer before the human assist is all but unneeded.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Collect is in operation in entire
> Germany. It does OCR on all license plates (also used for police
> purposes in realtime, despite initial vigorous denial) but currently 
> is only used for truck toll.
> 
How well does that actually work?  There were many articles in RISKS
Digest about problems with the early deployment.

And -- turning the topic back to crypto -- is there a cryptographic
solution to license plates?  Put another way, what are the legitimate
needs of various parties, and can these be satisfied in a
privacy-preserving way?  (Note: I do not regard "put a digital cash
wallet in the transponder" as a solution to the license plate problem,
since it doesn't handle the problem of toll evaders, people who aren't
members of the system, and many other things that license plates are
used for.)


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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