I was in college when self checkout became a thing and it took us all of about 45 seconds to realize that you could just check everything out as bananas. Steak was weighed and priced at 4011 (banana code) as the stoned teenager cashier paid no attention. Everything on the receipt was literally Bananas

Since its IR is it line of site? How would you go about changing every tag in the store to say 'Palestine $0.00', for example?

This is pretty dangerous. At least in my country the displayed price must be honored and they cannot refuse the sale.

I am overjoyed to see this story here, we haven't gotten a lot of these hacks lately. Well done!

I still don't think I've seen an actually useful application for a Flipper Zero. It's all just "use this to change store price tags" or "here's how to disconnect all bluetooth devices", but also "don't actually use this, because it would be illegal, this is just for educational purposes"

I saw a video where someone took banana bar code stickers wrapped around a bunch of bananas and put them on the TVs in their shopping cart and then checked out via self checkout.

I predict that self checkout will only remain in the more trustworthy areas…

That's crazy. But coming from someone who wrote a book on retail fraud and worked as a retail fraud analyst for several years... you could have just walked straight out with those items.

Transacting was your way of leaving a calling card for the investigators/analysts to find you... You stole regardless of how you did it.

Congratulations, you have discovered the concept of shoplifting!

IANAL and this depends on the jurisdiction, but in many places, the penalties for shenanigans like these are far steeper than for outright theft, as it's considered to be financial fraud.

You know you can just walk out the door with the items without using the scanner at all right?

Couldn't you also not just check stuff in? These are all obvious drawbacks, it's not really a high-scrutiny environment.

People like you are why we are living in an increasingly lower trust society, with for example having items behind locked door in shops.

Reminds me a bit of the shopping cart theory.

I saw a video where someone took banana bar code stickers wrapped around a bunch of bananas and put them on the TVs in their shopping cart and then checked out via self checkout.

I predict that self checkout will only remain in the more trustworthy areas…

Since its IR is it line of site? How would you go about changing every tag in the store to say 'Palestine $0.00', for example?

I wonder if since IR is invisible you could theoretically, in an intellectual exercise, blast IR light in a room and mass change them surreptitiously if that was your goal.

This is pretty dangerous. At least in my country the displayed price must be honored and they cannot refuse the sale.

Usually the advertised price must be honored, because it may have brought the customer to your store.

For prices displayed on the shelf-label inside the store the law is usually not that strict (YMMV), as a shop-owner can refuse sale on check-out (otherwise I could put a pricetag on e.g. a shopping-basket and the shop-owner would be legally required to sell me the basket...).

Besides, most shops I've seen (in Europe) already moved from Infrared communication to RF (NFC or proprietary), for centralized shelf-label management without handheld devices. So all this study (and the underlying reverse engineering of the IR-protocol) might do is probably accelerate the transition from IR to RF-based ESL...

In your country merchants are not obligated to honor fraudulently altered price displays.

Probably mostly dangerous for the user, or are people routinely writing their own price signs in the store and then "buying" it for less? Walking up to the lot at the car store and crossing out some zeros? Don't see how this would be any different.

I guess they can use the cameras to show you were tampering with the labels and call the police. Somewhat related xkcd https://xkcd.com/1494/

I am overjoyed to see this story here, we haven't gotten a lot of these hacks lately. Well done!

Hacks? In my Hacker News? The nerve!

Beside of how the media often tries to present it, the value of Flipper Zero is not for everyone to "become a hacker with this simple app".

Its value is to provide a standardized hardware platform for (white hat) hackers for probing, prototyping, refining and sharing of security research in the fields its hardware supports (Sub-GHz RF, NFC, IR, and custom external boards via simple Input/Output pins).

Prior to that, everyone who wanted to research e.g. RF security had to either build/assemble something custom or buy much more expensive equipment. This created a barrier to collaborate on research, as everyone had to buy/build the same setup.

On top of that, Person A researching some RF topic selected an RF-transceiver from Company X, Person B used a component and a proprietary SDK of Company Y, so consolidating both work streams for a better foundation for all RF-related research required alot of time and effort from someone, breaking workflows of at least one group of researchers, etc.

In contrast, security research which utilizes Flipper Zero can be reproduced and built upon by everyone. All the work is harmonized on the same Hardware architecture, so it's easy for someone familiar with the platform to dive straight into a new idea without having to build a new breadboard, select a chipset, buy additional probing equipment etc.

I use mine for all sorts. I volunteer at a second-hand shop so use it to set up remotes for donated media devices, I've used it to run scripts to apply the same changes to many computers that aren't on a group policy via BadUSB, I've used it for toys-to-life games, and very much more. There are plenty of genuine uses if you're cluey.

Yeah, I bought it and it collects a dust since then. Fun device but I have no idea how to use it in my life.

Turns out it's what they said it was all along, an educational device.

This one provides the source and asks you to build it yourself so at least it has some credibility for the "education use only" claim.

I've seen similar things posted on here before that had a binary build only and zero technical documentation. It was really hard to see any kind of research or education value in those.

It's useful for dealing with the industrial equivalent of IOT garbage

That's crazy. But coming from someone who wrote a book on retail fraud and worked as a retail fraud analyst for several years... you could have just walked straight out with those items.

Transacting was your way of leaving a calling card for the investigators/analysts to find you... You stole regardless of how you did it.

Congratulations, you have discovered the concept of shoplifting!

You know you can just walk out the door with the items without using the scanner at all right?

I wonder if since IR is invisible you could theoretically, in an intellectual exercise, blast IR light in a room and mass change them surreptitiously if that was your goal.

In your country merchants are not obligated to honor fraudulently altered price displays.

People like you are why we are living in an increasingly lower trust society, with for example having items behind locked door in shops.

Reminds me a bit of the shopping cart theory.

IANAL and this depends on the jurisdiction, but in many places, the penalties for shenanigans like these are far steeper than for outright theft, as it's considered to be financial fraud.

It sucks that we have to do extra labor and expose ourselves to this kind of legal risk all because a grocery store doesn't want to staff workers. It's not even like they pass these savings onto us...

Couldn't you also not just check stuff in? These are all obvious drawbacks, it's not really a high-scrutiny environment.

Most self-checkouts I've come across have weight validation – "Unexpected item in the bagging area".

Categorising things as "bananas" tricks the checkout into accepting the weight of an item, and you pay the appropriate price per bananagram.

Usually the advertised price must be honored, because it may have brought the customer to your store.

> Usually the advertised price must be honored, because it may have brought the customer to your store.

This is not the case for groceries in Massachusetts at least. If there’s a discrepancy between the tag’s price and the scanned price the store must charge the customer the lowest of the two: https://www.mass.gov/price-accuracy-information

How is the transport medium changing anything?

To me this is about having protocols that are suitable so not anybody can write to these labels without knowing a store secret or using replay attacks.

Back in the day people used to swap/edit price tags a lot. Also making fake coupons with the same knowledge. It was a pretty common and easy form of shoplifting since all barcodes used to do was just encode the pricing/discount information.

What they do is swap bar codes, or they code organic fruit as regular, or they "forget" to scan in the self checkout, but yes.