Tickets eliminated signage

As the posters have probably already informed you, the TTC is eliminating tickets on September 29th, 2008.  For the ordinary transit rider, using up your tickets in advance of the deadline may be advised.  The elimination of the ticket will probably be felt most by the counterfeiters however.  Over the years, fraudulent tickets and counterfeit tokens have severely impacted the system.  The bi-colour “toonie” style tokens were introduced in 2007 to try to halt counterfeiting and the elimination of the ticket is similarly motivated.

In discussing counterfeit tokens and tickets in Toronto, it is worth considering that a secure fare system is extremely difficult to design and maintain.  This past summer, the Electronic Frontier Foundation defended MIT students who completed academic research where they uncovered security vulnerabilities of the Charlie Card fare system in the Boston area. The students were sued when they planned to present on the presence of vulnerabilities at a hacker’s conference.  Their presentation did not contain information which would allow someone to launch an attack and the gag order lawsuit was thrown out on August 19, 2008.  The involved parties can now work towards addressing the security vulnerabilities in the system.

Here in Toronto, we will be addressing one set of our own vulnerabilities as we say farewell to tickets.