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Author: RailistRailist Date: Jul 13, 2008 03:12
I was affected by the Oyster problem on Saturday, 12 July.
An error message "30" appeared on the display at the gate, at Kings
Cross Station. I was told that I could go through the barriers as the
staff member on duty said that the error message referred to the the
system wide error that affected Oyster.
At Clapham Common Station, I was told by a lady there that I *had* to
renew my card there and then, as the card would never work anywhere
else. The transaction took over 30 minutes while a queue of angry
people behind me stood, accusing me of being a difficult customer and
that I must have been training the man behind the counter in how to
deal with problem passengers. At no point did any staff defend me or
explain to the people that I was only following LU staff
instructions.
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Author: John BJohn B Date: Jul 13, 2008 05:10
On 13 Jul, 11:12, Railist googlemail.com> wrote:> An error message "30" appeared on the display at the gate, at Kings
> Cross Station. I was told that I could go through the barriers as the
> staff member on duty said that the error message referred to the the
> system wide error that affected Oyster.
...which, at the time, they thought it did.
> At Clapham Common Station, I was told by a lady there that I *had* to
> renew my card there and then, as the card would never work anywhere
> else.
...which, by then, they'd realised was the case. I'm not sure what the
"code 30" issue is, but it does mean that an unspecified number of
unfortunate types like yourself need a new physical Oyster card.
> The transaction took over 30 minutes while a queue of angry
> people behind me stood, accusing me of being a difficult customer and
> that I must have been training the man behind the counter in how to
> deal with problem passengers. At no point did any staff defend me or
> explain to the people that I was only following LU staff
> instructions.
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Author: RailistRailist Date: Jul 13, 2008 05:19
On Jul 13, 1:10 pm, John B johnband.org> wrote:> On 13 Jul, 11:12, Railist googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> An error message "30" appeared on the display at the gate, at Kings
>> Cross Station. I was told that I could go through the barriers as the
>> staff member on duty said that the error message referred to the the
>> system wide error that affected Oyster.
>
> ...which, at the time, they thought it did.
>
>> At Clapham Common Station, I was told by a lady there that I *had* to
>> renew my card there and then, as the card would never work anywhere
>> else.
>
> ...which, by then, they'd realised was the case. I'm not sure what the
> "code 30" issue is, but it does mean that an unspecified number of
> unfortunate types like yourself need a new physical Oyster card...
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Author: Tom AndersonTom Anderson Date: Jul 13, 2008 06:17
On Sun, 13 Jul 2008, Railist wrote:
> I was affected by the Oyster problem on Saturday, 12 July.
That sounds completely bloody awful. You've made a complaint, right? If
they don't fix everything for you, for free, in a timely manner (which i'm
sure they will), small-claims them.
tom
--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!
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Author: John BJohn B Date: Jul 13, 2008 07:35
On 13 Jul, 13:19, Railist googlemail.com> wrote:>>> An error message "30" appeared on the display at the gate, at Kings
>>> Cross Station. I was told that I could go through the barriers as the
>>> staff member on duty said that the error message referred to the the
>>> system wide error that affected Oyster.
>
>> ...which, at the time, they thought it did.
>
>>> At Clapham Common Station, I was told by a lady there that I *had* to
>>> renew my card there and then, as the card would never work anywhere
>>> else.
>
>> ...which, by then, they'd realised was the case. I'm not sure what the
>> "code 30" issue is, but it does mean that an unspecified number of
>> unfortunate types like yourself need a new physical Oyster card.
>
> I very much doubt that this information...
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Author: thagor2008thagor2008 Date: Jul 14, 2008 01:36
On Jul 13, 1:10 pm, John B johnband.org> wrote:> ...which, by then, they'd realised was the case. I'm not sure what the
> "code 30" issue is, but it does mean that an unspecified number of
> unfortunate types like yourself need a new physical Oyster card.
Looks like LUL have been disabling various Oyster cards. I wonder if a
load have been hacked to give free journeys and LUL were just
disabling any in a specific id range. I can't see any other reason why
they'd require people to get whole new cards since it should be fairly
easy to soft reset the ones they've got. No doubt we'll just get some
spin about "system problems" however and never hear any more about it.
Curious how this unique event has occured only a couple of weeks after
some hackers claim to have cracked the system.
B2003
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Author: Roland PerryRoland Perry Date: Jul 14, 2008 02:02
>Looks like LUL have been disabling various Oyster cards. I wonder if a
>load have been hacked to give free journeys and LUL were just
>disabling any in a specific id range. I can't see any other reason why
>they'd require people to get whole new cards since it should be fairly
>easy to soft reset the ones they've got. No doubt we'll just get some
>spin about "system problems" however and never hear any more about it.
That's a fascinating conspiracy theory, but the only cards that are
supposed to be disabled are ones that were actually used early on
Saturday. Won't news leak out if lots of cards are disabled that weren't
used on Saturday?
>Curious how this unique event has occured only a couple of weeks after
>some hackers claim to have cracked the system.
As it seems very likely that the problem was a software update gone
wrong, that update might have indeed been about hacked cards - even if
the idea wasn't to disable all the hacked cards [1] by stealth (in
addition to making hacked cards easier to spot).
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Author: thagor2008thagor2008 Date: Jul 14, 2008 03:03
On Jul 14, 10:02 am, Roland Perry perry.co.uk> wrote:> That's a fascinating conspiracy theory, but the only cards that are
> supposed to be disabled are ones that were actually used early on
> Saturday.
If the mechanism for permanently disabling a card means they have to
be touched to a gate that would rather follow wouldn't it?
> As it seems very likely that the problem was a software update gone
> wrong, that update might have indeed been about hacked cards - even if
> the idea wasn't to disable all the hacked cards [1] by stealth (in
> addition to making hacked cards easier to spot).
Software update to what, the cards or the gates? If the latter how can
that brick a card? If it was the former and they were doing a firmware
update to all the cards then they obviously learnt the hard way that
firmware updates should only be done very carefully, and preferably
not at all unless its really really essential. Given LULs track record
however I wouldn't put it past them to do something that dumb.
Alternatively perhaps the cards have some sort of irreversable kill
switch or flag that was enabled by mistake. Either way , I suspect
we're not going to get the whole story.
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Author: Roland PerryRoland Perry Date: Jul 14, 2008 03:22
In message
79g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>, at
03:03:47 on Mon, 14 Jul 2008, thagor2008@googlemail.com remarked:>On Jul 14, 10:02 am, Roland Perry perry.co.uk> wrote:>> That's a fascinating conspiracy theory, but the only cards that are
>> supposed to be disabled are ones that were actually used early on
>> Saturday.
>
>If the mechanism for permanently disabling a card means they have to
>be touched to a gate that would rather follow wouldn't it?
So you think the idea was to disable *some* cards, but the system had a
brainstorm and disabled *all* of them?
>> As it seems very likely that the problem was a software update gone
>> wrong, that update might have indeed been about hacked cards - even if
>> the idea wasn't to disable all the hacked cards [1] by stealth (in
>> addition to making hacked cards easier to spot).
>
>Software update to what, the cards or the gates? If the latter how can
>that brick a card?
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Author: thagor2008thagor2008 Date: Jul 14, 2008 03:46
On Jul 14, 11:22 am, Roland Perry perry.co.uk> wrote:>>If the mechanism for permanently disabling a card means they have to
>>be touched to a gate that would rather follow wouldn't it?
>
> So you think the idea was to disable *some* cards, but the system had a
> brainstorm and disabled *all* of them?
That would be my guess - a simple programming mistake caused some
isThisADodgyCard() test always to return true so it killed them all.
> I don't know if you can update the firmware in the cards. Do they even
> have something to update?
Some simple cards are hardwired with just a couple of numeric
registers to carry values but Oysters will have onboard software
because they have to store a simple database of places and times
visited plus there's encryption going on. Whether that software is in
ROM or something read-write akin to flash that can be updated I dunno.
Obviously it has some sort of R/W memory to store the DB , balance etc
anyway.
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