Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable?

by ghuntley • 4 years ago

250 242 4 years ago

witheld• 4 years ago

If it’s anything like American McDonald’s those card readers should be hooked up over the network- not USB. There shouldn’t be a trivial way to use them as card skimmers, the software loaded on them, doesn’t just like hand out card numbers it processes the transaction.

Now, if they are hackable, and if they’re networked, or if you’re in America, your target is the Ethernet ports strategically hidden around the store. Look under and behind soda machines, inside cabinets in the lobby used to store napkins and stuff, randomly on the walls in the playplace etc

I don’t know about skimming cards from those ethernet ports, but you will have full access to the entire POS system which includes ordering and business data and the backend server.

KennyBlanken• 4 years ago

Yeah - I'm fairly certain payment terminals, USB or otherwise, do not provide credit card numbers in clear text. Any card information is encrypted on-device, then sent to the payment gateway - and the readers usually have some sort of anti-tamper stuff to at least prevent them from being opened up and the encryption key compromised or the hardware hijacked.

imroot• 4 years ago

FiPay (which is one of the pieces of software you can run with Verifone terminals) can be configured to return a credit card number back, but, it's only for legacy point of sales applications that need to have a number for whatever reason.

Even after moving everything to our Verifone vault, we still had those fields in our point of sales database, even if all of the numbers were '4111 1111 1111 1111' and the expiration dates were 2099+. We would pass the "proper" things down for the receipt as text fields (AID/TID/etc) to be printed on the receipt and stored with the transaction log.

MBCook10• 4 years ago

EMV tags gives you parts of the card number (so you can tell the kind of card or put the last 4 on receipt) but you don’t get the full number anymore like with mag-stripe.

FearlessNebula3• 4 years ago

The card readers are processing transactions? Wouldn’t there be a giant mainframe doing that somewhere?

MBCook10• 4 years ago

It’s a combination of both sides. It’s something like this:

For EMV the terminal and the card generate a request, and send it to the payment processor/bank.

They say yes/no and send back some stuff needed to complete the transaction. At this point there would be a hold on your card.

The terminal and card verify that and finish things, preparing proof of the final transaction.

That’s sent to the processor again who confirms the transaction took place. This is when the money is taken and the hold disappears.

Final proof from the processor is sent back to the terminal so the system knows everything went through. Now you get your receipt.

PeterisP3• 4 years ago

It's a bit tricky with different payment flows possible for all kinds of scenarios.

While at some point the transaction will get to "a giant mainframe somewhere" to get processed, it may or may not be during the process that a customer sees. It may be a "online" transaction where it's essentially that the terminal prepares a transaction message, the chipcard signs it, and then forwards it to issuing institution for authorization (including but not limited to checking availability of funds); or it may be permitted, within certain limits and depending on configuration, to have the chipcard sign the transaction and then deliver it for processing some time later (e.g. at end of day) so that either you can enable transactions in places which do not have internet access, or simply for processing speed for small amounts, taking on some limited risk for customer convenience.

MBCook10• 4 years ago

Even if they completely screwed up all the security in a way that would never pass compliance testing broadcasting all card info for every transaction to the network in the clear, with EMV cards all you’d get are EMV tags that are useless for anything but taking that one payment on that one terminal at that one time for that one amount.

You couldn’t use anything you harvest to make a new transaction on the cards, or even replay the transactions you saw.

(Mag-stripe is different, don’t use that!)

tinus_hn4• 4 years ago

Why would you spend money on switch ports for patching unused outlets?

prvit6• 4 years ago

Even if the kiosk loads the payment terminal firmware, that firmware will be signed.

It’s 2022, pretty much all developed nations use chip cards so you wouldn’t have anything to gain from this exercise anyway.

joombaga• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I understand why you brought up chip cards so this may be irrelevant, but in the US cards still have magnetic strips, and I believe most terminals are configured to fail over to the strip reader after a few failed attempts to read the chip.

prvit6• 4 years ago

It’s possible for a compromised payment terminal to record magnetic stripe card data. These kinds of payments essentially do not exist in developed countries.

It’s not possible for a compromised payment terminal to do anything interesting with other kinds of cards.

MBCook10• 4 years ago

There’s a process to it.

Every card, as part of the mag-stripe, has a little bit of data on it called the Service Code. It’s three characters. Part of that tells the terminal if the card has an EMV chip.

The terminal is required (I believe, by the brands) to force you to use the chip. The chip has to fail a set number of times (I believe usually 3) before it will process a mag-stripe transaction.

Even then, the payment processor is informed this transaction was a failed chip transaction that fell back to msg-stripe. So the processor can determine if they want to take the risk.

(Of course this doesn’t apply to mag-stripe only devices like older gas pumps)

wronglebowski3• 4 years ago

I was involved with the card reader upgrades at McDonald’s in the US. Essentially the card readers were stripped out of the main network and all buildings were rewired With a physically segregated network for cashless transactions.

Registers placed orders to the main routing Server in the back which passed the information to each individual station for fulfillment. The only time the card reader is involved is when the register makes a request to the cashless processing appliance in the back office then it reaches out to the card reader on the segregated network.

shepherdjerred• 4 years ago

This is good right? It sounds like a secure design.

wronglebowski3• 4 years ago

I’d say so. Also there was effectively no troubleshooting in the store you could do. Aside from unplugging and replugging the appliance and terminals it was all under a very strict service contract. Too many terminals down or the appliance that processes transaction and a tech had to be out in 8 hours regardless of time of day to service.

__MatrixMan__2• 4 years ago

I worked at a POS vendor who did this kind of thing internal to the device. We had a bunch of robots (they looked like 3d printers with a stylus instead of a print head) testing the payment flows because none of the android test tools could interface with that part of the device.

It was kind of impressive, but also kind of funny because the secrets we were protecting are symmetric and printed on the card for anyone to see.

charles_kaw6• 4 years ago

the secrets we were protecting are symmetric and printed on the card for anyone to see.

On the magstripe and plastic, yes, but that is very rarely used today in stores. A modern chip card doesn't really expose secrets.

acomjean• 4 years ago

This matches something the startup I worked at discover when installing power monitoring equipment in restaurants. We initially weren’t PCI compliant but it didn’t matter because we always installed on the network that didn’t process credit card info. Just one potential customer asked us about this…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_S...

I remember Target stores getting hacked a few years back and having a few million credit card numbers leaked..

https://money.cnn.com/2013/12/18/news/companies/target-credi...

gjsman-1000• 4 years ago

Wow… and I had felt nervous about the computers in my house and business still running Windows 10 (which will be EOL in 3 years, not a lot of time for a business). But McDonalds has no problem with Vista (EOL 5 years ago). Ouch.

If McDonalds ever gets hacked, this should come up for possible criminal liability.

prvit6• 4 years ago

If McDonalds ever gets hacked, this should come up for possible criminal liability.

Oh no, the criminals might find out about your disgusting eating habits! The horror!

Seriously though, what kind of damages might you as a customer expect to see from McDonalds kiosks getting hacked?

egypturnash• 4 years ago

The same damages you might expect from sticking your credit card into a hacked ATM.

There are some comments here claiming that their experience with McDonald’s order kiosks in the US makes them feel this is unlikely to be hackable, but “employees regularly leave them unlocked” sure sounds like an invitation for someone to find other hacks.

checker• 4 years ago

He posted a correction (at the bottom) that they are running Windows 7, so it's a marginally better situation.

LandoCalrissian• 4 years ago

I caught one of the self checkouts rebooting at my local grocery store and it was still running Windows XP.

Jaruzel• 4 years ago

Nothing wrong with that, IF it's on an isolated WAN, and not connected to the internet.

A fully patched copy of XP, with all the group/local policies set to lock it down, is very secure.

In a lot of cases, it may look like XP, but it's actually XP Embedded, which has a lot of stuff stripped out, which reduces the attack surface significantly.

It costs money to upgrade the checkout application for a new OS, and put it through rigorous testing - These things need to work almost 24/7 without crashing or needing admin intervention.

It's the old idiom: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

userbinator• 4 years ago

I have no problem with XP either.

The "EOL" carping is mostly from the corporate interests; and as the other comments here explain, the actual secret part of the card processing happens on a complete separate machine which is definitely far more secured.

thomasjudge• 4 years ago

In Australia, they call McDonald's, "Macca's"?

mhh__• 4 years ago

yep. "Maccies" is common in the UK

FearlessNebula3• 4 years ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1oFpTNsPu_w

simondotau• 4 years ago

Yes, and it’s embraced by the brand.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GEhHkjB075M

stevage2• 4 years ago

Yep. At least since I was a kid in the 80s

bigiain• 4 years ago

They even use http://macc.as

(And have done since at least 2013, according to whois.)

unsafecast6• 4 years ago

The domain seems to try to redirect to yourquestions.mcdonalds.com.au but it doesn't really work...

grishka• 4 years ago

The interesting part is that it's apparently embraced by the brand itself. Back when we had real McDonald's in Russia*, its colloquial name was "makdak" or simply "mak", but it was that — how people called it (and still do). Never recognized officially.

* the corporate pulled out of Russia several months ago and the business was sold to the biggest franchisee. The new owner reopened the stores under a different brand name but kept most of everything else.

floucky• 4 years ago

Funny, it's Macdo in France

madeofpalk• 4 years ago

Supermarket chain "Woolworths" - commonly called "Woolies" - had a campaign using the Woolies name a while back. These short names are so ubiquitous in Australia that of course they'll eventually use them, if only tongue in cheek.

Gigachad4• 4 years ago

I'd say its more common to call it by the official name but no one in Australia would be confused if you called it Macca's

geoffmunn• 4 years ago

Also "Maccas" in New Zealand, and I was wondering if they'd be ok with our other names - "Micky D's" and "Smack Donalds".

Winsaucerer2• 4 years ago

In Australia, we shorten the name for all sorts of things, so "maccas" is in line with the general theme. More examples (not sure if some of these are found everywhere or not):

* Australian: Aussie

* McDonalds: maccas

* Barbeque: barbie

* Ambulance: ambo (often used to refer to the ambulance staff -- I'm not even sure what they're called other than 'ambos'!)

* Breakfast: brekky

* Afternoon: arvo

* Cup of coffee: cuppa

* Registration for car: rego

* Woolworth's (supermarket): Woolies

* Service station: servo

vermilingua• 4 years ago

Ambos are Paramedics

jaclaz2• 4 years ago

Many years ago, I was surprised the first time a cashier told me: Tah tah-tah.

I later discovered that it was the "short form" of "Thank you, goodbye"

quickthrower2• 4 years ago

Sco-mo: Scott Morrison former prime minister

Avo: Avocado

Slartie2• 4 years ago

In Germany it's fairly common to call McDonalds "Mäckes", which sounds very similar to "maccas" when spoken. This is an unofficial designation with a slightly negative touch as well, as it's often preferred to the actual name when referring to McDonalds specifically as a provider of mostly unhealthy food.

stkdump2• 4 years ago

I don't know, for me Meckes is neutral. The ones with more negative connotations are probably 'Zum Goldenen Adler' (due to the sarcastic undertone) und 'Amerikanische Delikatessen' (due to the perceived oxymoron)

thematrixturtle• 4 years ago

How to Speak Australian: Abbreviate Everything!

https://youtu.be/yDb_WsAt_Z0

stkdump2• 4 years ago

It is also common in Europe, or at least Germany, though more likely spelled Meckes. The term apparently used in the US (Mickey Ds) is unheard of here. There seems to be a trend in the US to dissociate from everything that sounds like it could have European history or influence (see also the renaming of french fries)

kostecki• 4 years ago

Also a thing in Denmark where’s it’s “Maccen”. They use it in commercials too.

“Den Gyldne Måge or “The Golden Seagull” is another common, but older, name here.

kyelewis• 4 years ago

As pointed out here, the huge assumption in this article is is:

If someone installs malware on here - just insert a usb stick or use the recovery mode - then tada we have the next generation of atm skimming.

Which is just not how these payment devices work- they are entirely separate, they are sent a request to make a transaction, that transaction (and also likely the transaction request itself) occur entirely in a secure connection between someone like Verifone, and the device itself.

The PC has has no way to get those card details, only request a transaction and confirm a payment status as successful or failed.

walterlb• 4 years ago

Today at another McDonald's I observed the entire bootstrap process and can confirm that the kiosk indeed is responsible for installing “custom firmware” on the card reader

If this part is correct, it seems like an attacker could compromise the reader itself.

charles_kaw6• 4 years ago

Considering the article writer already expresses some clear misunderstandings, I don't think it's correct.

Maybe they witnessed it, but that would be a bigger deal than some shitty windows box being popped. Certainly, that would not pass compliance.

MBCook10• 4 years ago

I work with POS hardware at my job. The “custom firmware” is likely just some settings, screens for the POS to display (so they’re McD branded instead of the POS maker), and some per payment-processor configuration so the terminals are using the expected encryption (differs per processor and customer).

Even if it was real firmware (I doubt it), it’s likely the firmware for the POS device interface. I don’t believe that firmware has any control over the actual payment processing bits of hardware, just the software intermediary.

Since that intermediary only has access to EMV tags (which anyone in the payment path has) there is no point. The secret encryption stuff that secures passwords is not controlled from any layer an attacker could touch, outside of documented configuration parameters.

AnotherGoodName• 4 years ago

Signed firmware though.

Those card readers also typically have photodiodes in them and numerous tamper switches pressed to the case to wipe their internal memory if tampered. Just to be clear I'm not talking about EPROM - they have actual photodiodes inside along with physical switches and a coin battery that will wipe the ROM if tampered.

It's common to have the tamper switches trigger if you drop the terminal. They'll need to be re-flashed from scratch when that happens. eg. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33872627/how-to-fix-tamp...

Anyway the TLDR is that the Card Reader part of any POS system is reasonably secure.

atwood222• 4 years ago

Also chip cards don’t ever leak the CC number as part of the transaction. However, it seems like you could request a transaction for a different merchant?

charles_kaw6• 4 years ago

In a correctly configured system, the terminal itself would have to be reconfigured. That can sort of be be done via the POS, but also requires credentials from the group that configured the terminal.

The terminals really don't trust the POS systems.

lyall2• 4 years ago

Chip cards do send the card number as part of the transaction. They just also send other information that makes it easier to tell if the original card is physically present, meaning you don’t have to worry as much about someone stealing the details and spoofing your card.

You may be thinking of tokenization, which is a feature of some services such as Apple/Google Pay. This is where a “fake” account number—really a number that is scoped to eg a specific device or a specific merchant—is sent with the transaction. That then gets resolved to the real number somewhere down the processing pipeline closer to the card issuer. The benefit being if someone snoops this tokenized account number they won’t be able to use it thanks to the tight scoping.

vladvasiliu• 4 years ago

I doubt that'd work. My client is set up as multiple merchants (different companies from a legal pov) but with the same payment provider, going over the same pipes, etc. Even so, the way the payment servers were set up, they could only mix up the merchant config if the "wrong" one also happened to be on the same server.

They have dedicated servers, so I'd expect McDonald's and other big chains to have them, too, which means that you couldn't send payments no anyone outside the mother company.

vishnugupta3• 4 years ago

request a transaction for a different merchant?

To be able to pull this off:

1. You need to register yourself as a merchant at an acquirer bank. Either directly or through intermediaries such as Stripe/Square etc.,

2. Go through reasonably stringent KYB (Know Your Business) process.

3. Do a few legitimate transactions so that everyone in the payment processing chain (acquiring bank, payment gateway etc., issuing bank, network (Visa/MasterCard)) begins to trust you.

4. Reconfigure the kiosk to use the above merchant account.

5. Pull out money from the acquiring bank before enough customers raise a charge-back and your your account is marked as fraudulent by someone/everyone in the payment processing chain.

These fly-by-night merchants are indeed created; especially at marketplaces such as EBay, Amazon. But to do it at a physical kiosk such as McDonalds' seems like a low ROI to me.

prvit6• 4 years ago

Also chip cards don’t ever leak the CC number as part of the transaction

Yes they do. In fact, you can read the CC number from the chip without even knowing the PIN.

charles_kaw6• 4 years ago

btw if anyone has ever taken a look at a POS setup, it's a bit misleading to the uninformed

In some solutions, the readers are in fact hooked up directly to the POS system. However, the card terminal does not see unencrypted payment data. The POS is acting as a network bridge or switch, while getting limited information over network from the terminal.

In fact, I'm not sure that's even something that's allowed in large scale installations today.

MBCook10• 4 years ago

You only get unencrypted stuff when doing mag-stripe, and that’s mostly just card number and name. Same with tap-to-pay may-stripe emulation (the old way which no one is supposed to use anymore, even in the US per credit card rules).

That’s why everyone has/is moving off mag-stripe (depending on country) and to EMV. With EMV and EMV contactless the terminal never gets the full card number, among many other significant security improvements.

closewith2• 4 years ago

Do you have a source for this?

The EMV spec doesn’t include encryption of any data sent to the terminal from the card.

The transaction cryptogram is signed, however.

Cyberdog2• 4 years ago

So would it be possible to install software or hardware which always returns a "success" from the card reader hardware without it actually doing the transaction and give everyone who uses that machine free food until someone figures it out? Hmm…

irjustin• 4 years ago

This is like a 2005 hack. I'm sure you could come up with at least one good solution to this problem.

tmpz22• 4 years ago

If we say average transaction size is $10 and that you’ll save 1.000 customers (generous) before you’re caught.

You just committed a felony to provide $10.000 in free food.

Might as well get a day job and make that contribution annually and skip federal prison.

lelanthran• 4 years ago

So would it be possible to install software or hardware which always returns a "success" from the card reader hardware without it actually doing the transaction and give everyone who uses that machine free food until someone figures it out? Hmm…

Almost certainly not on EMV certified card acquirers, unless there is a bug in the firmware. These things are so locked down that, even as an authorised developer for the payment terminal, we had no access to the hardware, no way to view the cards encrypted payload, etc.

avianlyric5• 4 years ago

Or you could tweak the ordering software to completely ignore the terminal, and not bother charging at all.

rtkwe• 4 years ago

That should be pretty easy to block with signing they should already be doing.

btown• 4 years ago

But if an attacker owns the touchscreen, they can do nefarious things like adding a "Please re-enter your PIN on the touchscreen to confirm your purchase" dialog, then match that PIN against a separate leaked database of card numbers and user identities. It's not just whether the card reader can be pivoted to; it's the entire notion that the kiosk itself carries the trust of the overall brand.

Gigachad4• 4 years ago

It would be a huge amount of work to pull this off and it's something that would be detected within the day because its so odd and not at all how normal payment flows work.

Not clear how you would match the pin either without having some personal info on the user which you don't have.

BoorishBears3• 4 years ago

You could also tape a piece of paper up with a fake (tech support/tax help/credit help/reverse mortgage) line with a fake McDonald's endorsement in the early hours of the morning and make off with plenty of victims as the senior crowd rolls in for a grand time investment of 60 seconds.

If you want to get creative with attacks you can, but sometimes comparing a creative attack to a "boring" attack can help frame the conversation.

I've written kiosk apps that landed across the US and while there was a ton of hand wringing about security, and in an informal setting I brought up a simple question:

If you reverse engineer the update process to have it show a penis, or you just carve a penis into the public display with a pocket knife, what's the difference and which is more likely to happen?

naugtur• 4 years ago

If you can match a pin to a database of cards numbers, I can supply you with a database of all pins in existence

wowokay• 4 years ago

I know from experience that similar setups tend to have the workstation load the verifone updates, so a package could be inserted, it would take some more insider knowledge.

Too2• 4 years ago

Do these payment terminals have secure boot or other forms of update payload verification?

In that case the risk of accepting malicious updates from insecure touch screen would be much less.

t_mann• 4 years ago

But the transaction info has to be transmitted by the touch terminal - unless the recipient is set to a fixed value in the card machine, that should at least make it possible to re-route all of McDonald's revenue to some arbitrary recipient.

jon-wood2• 4 years ago

The recipient is set to a fixed value in the card machine.

vishnugupta3• 4 years ago

+1. To add, the modern EMV chip enabled transactions are not at all like magnetic stripe transactions. The chip in the card is not a passive storage but is also a computation device that signs a transaction, generates one time keys etc.,

Of course it is still possible to skim the card number off of magnetic strip and sell it in the darknet. However, the static card number is becoming less and less of a relevant thing now a days as more sites/processors are migrating to dynamic auth such as Apple Pay etc.,

A good overview + detail : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv1DjtBwADg

tjoff4• 4 years ago

NFC cards dominate here though, which effectively negates the many benefits of chip cards.

avianlyric5• 4 years ago

You might not be able skim card details, but you could probably get the terminal to issue unexpected transactions.

The most interesting transaction would be a very large refund. I’ve seen organised crime groups target restaurants in the past to issue themselves £1k+ refunds. They pretend to pay for meal, and while they have the EMV terminal in their hand, they cancel the original transaction, put the device into management mode (using default passwords) and issue themselves a nice large refund.

It’s a complete pain in the arse for the banks receiving these refunds to catch and deal with properly. It’s surprisingly hard to return the money to the restaurant.

honkdaddy• 4 years ago

That’s pretty funny. Not that the restaurants deserve to be stolen from, but using the default password on an EMV is about as foolish as a restaurant leaving their registers open. I’m surprised the terminals don’t force you to at least set your own passcode.

lifeisstillgood2• 4 years ago

In the article he points out the PC is responsible for updating firmware in the card reader. So while it's a more sophisticated hack, change the firmware to record the pin and send it back to the PC etc etc.

Goz3rr2• 4 years ago

I'm assuming the firmware is cryptographically signed, because they have to upgrade from untrusted devices. That negates this entire attack vector.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable?
Underpaid staff who used to do ordering have been replaced with.... staff across Australia leaving the Kiosks unlocked to make it easier to replace the paper.

They pay the staff who replace paper less than the staff who served at the counter.

Case closed.

SyneRyder• 4 years ago

In my experience, the people who replace the paper are the staff who serve at the counter. They don't just replace the paper, they'll also refeed it when the receipt printer inevitably gets jammed.

Counter service hasn't completely disappeared, but they seem to spend most of their time now bagging orders for Uber Eats / Doordash & taking drive-through orders. They're also there for customer enquiries, eg "why did the self service decline my card", "I didn't get any sauce with my McNuggets", "I got a medium fries instead of a large"

unethical_ban2• 4 years ago

I will take this opportunity to go off-topic and discuss the UX of the McD's terminals.

It's terrible.

I loathe it. I always go to a person if possible, whereas I go to the self-checkout at the grocer's. The technical performance and the menu navigation of those kiosks is unbearable, and I'm a 30s techie.

stevage2• 4 years ago

I can't stand any self checkouts anywhere. I always order with a person.

lotsofpulp• 4 years ago

I love self checkouts. Home Depot has the best with the wireless scanners.

With few items, I can be in and out in a minute and never have to wait in line because there are so many self checkouts. If I have a lot of items, then I can wait in line for cashier because scanning all of them is more work than I care for.

I rarely have issues using them, at a variety of retailers.

technothrasher• 4 years ago

whereas I go to the self-checkout at the grocer's

"Please place item in bagging area. Please place item in bagging area. Please place item in bagging area. Thank y... Please place item in bagging area. Please wait for assistance." Yeah, no thanks. I only use those crappy fail machines when I have no choice because there are no open checkout lanes with people manning them.

unethical_ban2• 4 years ago

I used to agree. The store in which I use it the most, HEB in Texas, doesn't have issues often. The only design decision that is frustrating is that for certain items, it tries to insist I "bag" the item by putting it on the small bagging area, even if it's a 2.5 gallon jug of water. I have to wait 5 seconds for the prompt to time out and then I can say "skip bagging".

For a few small items, CVS and HEB do well.

Cyberdog2• 4 years ago

Given roughly equivalent line waits, I've found human checkers tend to be much faster if you have more than a handful of items - they know where the barcodes are on the items so they don't have to play the game where you try to figure out which side of the soda bottle or cereal box has the barcode on it, and they already have the codes for produce memorized. Sometimes you get an incompetent or new checker, or you get stuck behind the morbidly obese lady who has to pay for $5 worth of Gatorade and cookies with an EBT card and $60 worth of cigarettes and dog food with a credit card, oh that one didn't work let's try it again, yeah it didn't work again, well now let's try this card this one will work for sure NO TIMMY I DON'T CARE IF YOU'VE GOT TO USE THE BATHROOM YOU SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND SHUT UP OR I SWEAR TO CHRIST I WILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT, but just on the average I find self check-out machines to take much longer because the person doing all the work has far more experience and competence at the task in question.

mwint3• 4 years ago

The self-checkout navigation is intentionally hobbled, probably because old people will 'press' a button about six times with shaking hands. Feels like they're putting button presses into a buffer for a half second or more.

Watch next time an employee has to "help" you with self checkout: they scan their badge and then can press buttons as quickly as they like.

I've noticed recent iterations of self-checkouts are much easier to use. Feels like they've relaxed the weight-on-tray requirements.

And at self checkouts with the option of a handheld scanner, use it. Often the handheld scanner seems to bypass the place-item-in-bagging-area thing.

rightbyte• 4 years ago

The self-checkout navigation is intentionally hobbled, probably because old people will 'press' a button about six times with shaking hands.

So that is why ... it makes sense since I distincly remember the kiosks working fine in the beginning.

They should add a "turbo button".

The kiosks infuriate me by the sluggish UI. Also the 3 or 4 sellup spam ads you get make it even slower.

rrrhys• 4 years ago

The people are removed from the ordering experience at all McDonalds in my local area (Sydney Australia-ish)

The registers are hidden behind a counter and there's no obvious place to order, unless you use the kiosk.

If you stand at the empty counter for ~5 minutes, a staff member will eventually appear for something else (e.g. to give out an order) and serve you reluctantly - it's awful.

jdavis703• 4 years ago

I have seen legacy companies with security rules so tight they can’t ship anything cool. On the flip side are legacy companies that ship great user experiences, but apparently just totally ignore the security people. Does the security professions have a “human centric security design” capability? It’s something the non-tech Fortune 500s to desperately need.

kevin_thibedeau• 4 years ago

If anyone has a vulnerable card processing system it would be Lowes. They didn't support chip and pin over a year after the deadline. Suggesting a whole lot of broken system design that is probably still held together with bubblegum and duct tape.

BoorishBears3• 4 years ago

The confident self-assured tone as this article gets everything but the very basics wrong is definitely something...

muppetman• 4 years ago

This is the same clown who had a post a few weeks ago about his speakers that don't go as loud. But yea, he pulls up at beaches in his van and starts playing loud music that no one asked for. He could be a member of that fantastic band "Tool"

krnlpnc• 4 years ago

McDonalds in Australia do a decent cup of coffee. It’s not great but it’s consistently decent so I often start my day with a cup.

Ugh lost me on the first sentence

SoftTalker• 4 years ago

If your idea of coffee is Folger's or Maxwell House brewed in a drip machine, McDonald's serves decent coffee.

BrissyCoder2• 4 years ago

No. They do proper espresso style coffees with decent beans.

BrissyCoder2• 4 years ago

They really do though.

paulpauper• 4 years ago

They are hackable in part because the stakes are low that not much thought is put into security. We're talking ordering food, not cryptocurrency or bank records.

chris_wot3• 4 years ago

Credit card readers are attached to these.

zinekeller• 4 years ago

As pointed out multiple times, these are separate systems that are designed to be connected to insecure systems.

mrweasel2• 4 years ago

the stakes are low that not much thought is put into security.

What I don't get is that NO though was put in to security. Sure the card reader and the payment processing, I'm honestly sure that someone did a reasonable job at that part, because that comes as part of the payment terminal.

For a management perspective I can't see why you didn't think about the security for just a few minutes extra and came up with a much better product in general. There's certainly a point to being overly focused on security and never shipping, but it's also the case that thinking about security and misuse will help you to build better, more stable products.

These devices fail, and they fail constantly. I was a a Burger King two weeks ago, and again at the same restaurant two days ago. Two out of three kiosk where broken when I arrived two days ago, that all three where broken after I order two weeks ago. At the local McDonald's it often that three or four out of ten kiosks are broken. They aren't broken as in physically damaged, it's the software that's not working or stuck somehow.

As the article points out, they break so frequently that they are left unlocked, which in turn violates the idea that they are physically secured.

Three things I'd change is:

* Don't run as administrator, because hey, it's a quick thing to fix, so might as well.

* Read-only filesystems.

* PXE boot those things, so that they'll get fresh OS + application install on each boot.

If you ever see staff try to fix a kiosk, then you'll notice that they just open them and reboot the device. From what I've seen that frequently fails to fix the device, meaning that the system is in a broken state. Having the whole thing boot a known good image could help.

When the normal recovery plan for thousands of these kiosk is: "Reboot and hope it works. If not, wait for a technician to re-image, or reboot again." then you didn't spend enough time on systems design.

presentation2• 4 years ago

Why not just have the receipt paper door be separate from that containing ports?

Peleus• 4 years ago

Honestly I have to say this is the type of security article that annoys me the most.

- Snarky and talks down about people not "in the know" about potential security issues.

- Supreme confidence that they are super knowledgeable about how it "should" be done.

- Fails to provide any actual demonstrable impact, but doing the old "left to the reader" as to how it's clearly exploitable.

But when you drill into the details, they are just fundamentally wrong about how the product is even working, what is possible with the attack surface, and how components are interacting with each other.

There are plenty of vulnerabilities out there, and companies do make stupid mistakes with regards to security in lots of situations. That doesn't mean that every pie in the sky idea you have (oh look, I did a kiosk escape, dot dot dot, clearly I can credit card skim now) is possible.

gergov• 4 years ago

it's in the tradition of "posting the wrong answer to get the good one". within this genre the comment section ends up even more terrifying than the post itself!

Gordonjcp2• 4 years ago

Fails to provide any actual demonstrable impact, but doing the old "left to the reader" as to how it's clearly exploitable.

Yup.

PoC or GTFO.

notme1234• 4 years ago

Guessing USB Rubber Ducky is an option

ck2• 4 years ago

Understandably covering the technical details but the practical reason is some executive got a bigger kickback offer from one of the vendors regardless of their competence and there you go, screws over millions of people with high risk for an extra vacation home.

chris_wot3• 4 years ago

I have contacted McDonalds Australia (I am an Australian) and asked them for comment.

steve_taylor• 4 years ago

These kiosks arrived about 10 years too late anyway. All they need to do is make their phone app a bit more usable and no one would need the kiosks.

Regarding paper, 99 times out of 100, there’s no paper in the printer. People are used to having to remember their order number.

Too2• 4 years ago

Apps, requires you to install them and they always require you to sign in.

Not something I’m willing to do just to grab a cheese burger. It’s not like I go to mcd on such regular basis.

Don’t say it’s possible to make one that doesn’t. First, kids would abuse it to anonymously order 200 Big Macs in another town, and secondly companies are always too greedy to look away from that stream of potential user data.

happyopossum• 4 years ago

Apps, requires you to install them and they always require you to sign in.

A) app-less or install-free apps are a thing, on iOS they’re called app clips and work great.

B) the mcd’s app (and all of the other fast food apps I can think of) don’t require a login. You pay for your food when you order it, so the ‘anonymous order’ attack isn’t a thing.

Also they usually take ApplePay, which is an added security benefit.

ajanuary• 4 years ago

The “sorry, there is no paper” error message popup obscures the order number. So if you missed it before the error message shows, you don’t know your number.

jamesy0ung• 4 years ago

Or if there is paper, it doesn't print on it

Ordered a meal yesterday and the receipt came out blank. Person making orders asked for receipt and I showed them and they all laughed.

dan_mctree• 4 years ago

All they need to do is make their phone app a bit more usable and no one would need the kiosks.

No, please. Assuming everyone can and will use apps is a terrible idea. Apps are terrible for accessibility

- People who don't have phones

- People who do have a phone, but it can't install your app

- People who didn't bring their phones

- People who brought their phone, but it's out of batteries

- People who brought their phone, but it can't connect to the internet

- People who are not tech savvy enough to install/use apps

- People who can't use your app for disability related reasons

- People who don't want to use your apps out of some principle

- People who might be able to use your app, but it is just so tedious that the extra friction makes them not want to

None of these are small groups. Relying on app usage is business suicide

kennydude• 4 years ago

My local McDonald's (at least in the UK) almost always has a queue for the single human taking orders as they mostly use cash. Some of them don't even look at the kiosks as an option, even if prompted by staff. The most you get is a member of staff using the kiosk for them,

selfthrow2• 4 years ago

Closer to Truth with Robert Lawrence Kuhn is great for Philosophy/Science content - a variety of episodes with great interviews from multiple perspectives and in digestible segments: https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV

freeflight• 4 years ago

I was expecting some fun UI exploits like getting a negative bill for removing all the ingredients on a burger, and adding that up to pay for an actual burger [0], sadly nothing like that.

[0] https://www.delish.com/food-news/a27091162/mcdonalds-kiosks-...

foxes• 4 years ago

TLDR don’t listen to anyone with a stupid crypto ape profile picture.

sgjohnson6• 4 years ago

Why is everyone so concerned about a malicious party compromising the card reader? Because that would be solely a McDonald's problem.

No credit card issuer would refuse chargebacks for fraud that occurred because of this, nd ultimately when they'd find the source, it'd me McDonalds picking up the tab.

The risk to the average person from this is 0. At most it's an inconvenient call to a bank and sorting out a card replacement. (And an extra inconvenience for people using debit cards).

I have plenty of cards, and I wouldn't care one bit if the details of some got leaked, as I'm getting a push notification for every transaction.

Anything unexpected? Call/fill in an online form, and it's resolved within 2 days, and by then you already have a new card in the mail.

zerm778• 4 years ago

nerds

smelbe• 4 years ago

If it's anything like the McDonald's in the United States, the card readers need to be connected through the network rather than through USB. Because the software that is installed onto them does more than simply send out card numbers, there should not be an easy way to exploit them as card skimmers. The software that is loaded on them handles the transaction.

desindol• 4 years ago

It’s easy because they had to be cheap and ready just in time of the next shareholder Meeting.

thinkingemote• 4 years ago

I think many would be interested in what kind of surveillance hardware and software the kiosks have. It should also be easier to determine what is being sent over the net to some end point than getting encrypted payment details.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a camera with video, microphone or at least photographs of customers. Indeed, grocery kiosks have these in the UK, some actually show you the video feed on the monitor in front of you to install fear to deter shoplifting.

Where this data goes and what the company uses the data for, we don't know.

Lio2• 4 years ago

I never understand how these terminals get past hygiene regs.

They’re touch screen and right next to toilets where the previous customer may …or may not have just washed their hands.

Then customers go right ahead and eat their food with their hands.

It’s like the perfect recipe for worms. Gross.

dewey• 4 years ago

How is that different than any other surface in the restaurant, doors or card terminals where you sometimes have to type the pin code?

Lio2• 4 years ago

You have a good point and are probably correct, but still.

These days most McDonalds seem to have automatic doors and card payments are contactless via phone or card.

Assuming the kitchen staff keep their hands clean and the trays are washed the touchscreens are the most obvious thing too break the illusion of hygene.

The real problem I guess is eating food with your hands without immediately washing them first.

Historically before contactless payments and automatic doors the world didn't end so it probably is just a percived "yuck factor" on my part, I fully acknowledge that.

It's just... those screens and their suspicious smears... :-###..

xor99• 4 years ago

True hacking by some Australian innovators "in this space" (AMAZING SELF-SERVE KIOSK HACK THAT SCORES YOU FREE MACCAS):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7ttj41Fdig

snickerbockers• 4 years ago

Im too high-inhib to stand there fucking with the kiosk while everyone in the restaurant is staring at me wondering if they should tell the employees.

hestefisk2• 4 years ago

I wonder if these systems are airgapped (or perimeter around the local restaurant). If the menu doesn’t change very often, there’s a good chance that could be and the payment terminal does all the work itself. In which case it would not be much different to an ATM or POS running OS/2 Warp.

memcg• 4 years ago

Hacking aside, they are still subject to good old programming errors. Back in November 2019 the kiosk showed a Bacon BBQ Quarter Pounder for $0. You could customize it and still check out for $0. I ordered as many as 6 at once, plus a drink and paid $1.04 total. This worked for about a month.

itsthejb• 4 years ago

Can confirm the usability problems - during the recent brief heatwave I popped into a local store to treat myself to a rare guilty pleasure of a McFlurry. After confirming, printer paper error pops up, giving the option to continue. Clicked ok, but no re-presentation of the order number. Could remember it anyway, but unimpressive for a mega corp

Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable?

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