Theoretical Wireless laundry machine penetration

[Theory5]

Hi I am a student at Johnson & Whales University (goin for my BS in network engineering), and they have some contract with this company that leases them washers and dryers. But these are no ordinary washers and dryers, instead of coin operation they have a RFID chip reader. As far as i can tell the whole system is wireless, and it is also truly a system from hell. For the last two trimesters I (and everybody else) have been getting free laundry service due to machine malfunctions. And it isnt limited to my hall, EVERYBODY on campus has been getting free service for two trimesters! It was great, until they came in and screwed with the machines. For two weeks they had massive problems, such as unresponsiveness, washing machines only running for 20 minutes instead of the normal 35-40 minutes, etc etc. Then the finally fixed everything and now everybody needs to load money on their RFID cards from this machine that never works. So I use my debit card to put 30 bucks on my card, and then after I do that I realize I still need to use the card loading machine to enter the code. And as usual the damn machine declines my code. And the people at tech support say I will be contacted LATER!
FYI the website is automaticlaundry.com or something and they have a special site for putting money on your card if you are a JWU student. http://www.revaluemycard.com/johnsonandwhales
So now on to business. Hypothetically, what tools and software would I need to hack the wireless service and poke around in the software to reconfigure it to do what i want (such as work correctly)? They use some software to configure the machines, I have no Idea of the name though.
My wireless card is a Broadcom 4321 AG 802.11 a/b/g/draft-n Wifi adapter so very few tools work with it. Does anybody know any wireless software that works with it?
And i am running windows 7 atm I will probably put a distro onto one of my flash drives again so if anybody has an suggestions for that It would help. I will probably put backtrack on.
Thanks,
Theory

[orwell84]

A better solution would probably be to pool together with a few other people and drop about $800 on a washing machine and a dryer. Or maybe one of these: http://www.pcrichard.com/catalog/thumbn ... tegoryId=1
That would be less complicated, and less illegal. Sorta expensive, but it could amount to less than $200 per person if you share between five people. That could be too many people, but how often do college kids do their laundry anyway?
...Or wait for tech support.

[insomaniacal]

This topic is sort of borderline within the rules. Pleae note, we won't help you with essentially stealing money from a company, no matter how much we agree/disagree with said company. We don't support illegal activities.

That being said, I would recommend you find out all you can about the machines, as well as try to sniff any and all network data that you can. If they use a regular wireless interface, you might be able to connect to the machine via telnet, though I doubt it.

Your best bet is trying to get a model # and researching online first.

Good luck!

[Theory5]

This topic is sort of borderline within the rules. Pleae note, we won't help you with essentially stealing money from a company, no matter how much we agree/disagree with said company. We don't support illegal activities.

Yea, this is why I wrote this thread with the words "theoretical" and "hypothetically" this means that I do not intent to actually do anything, this is more of a mind exercise. and I never said I wanted to steal any money. They already have 30 of my dollars that I cant use due to an error in their system that will not be fixed until "later".

Orwell, the problem is that the machine that adds money onto your card does not work properly. So even if I did get a bunch of kids together, we wouldn't be able to put money onto any RFID card.

That being said, I would recommend you find out all you can about the machines, as well as try to sniff any and all network data that you can. If they use a regular wireless interface, you might be able to connect to the machine via telnet, though I doubt it.

yea, I think the wireless interface is modified a bit. I doubt it is connected to the JWU network, actually i was thinking that If I could locate the wireless adapters that might be a possible entry point, because how much security can a washing machine have? I think all the machines are wireless and the machine that allows you to put money on the card is the one that has both a wireless access point to connect to the washer and dryers, and a hard point for connecting to the company. That would be harder to get into, I think the washing machine and dryers are the weak points.

[sanddbox]

This topic is sort of borderline within the rules. Pleae note, we won't help you with essentially stealing money from a company, no matter how much we agree/disagree with said company. We don't support illegal activities.

Yea, this is why I wrote this thread with the words "theoretical" and "hypothetically" this means that I do not intent to actually do anything, this is more of a mind exercise. and I never said I wanted to steal any money. They already have 30 of my dollars that I cant use due to an error in their system that will not be fixed until "later".

Orwell, the problem is that the machine that adds money onto your card does not work properly. So even if I did get a bunch of kids together, we wouldn't be able to put money onto any RFID card.

That being said, I would recommend you find out all you can about the machines, as well as try to sniff any and all network data that you can. If they use a regular wireless interface, you might be able to connect to the machine via telnet, though I doubt it.

yea, I think the wireless interface is modified a bit. I doubt it is connected to the JWU network, actually i was thinking that If I could locate the wireless adapters that might be a possible entry point, because how much security can a washing machine have? I think all the machines are wireless and the machine that allows you to put money on the card is the one that has both a wireless access point to connect to the washer and dryers, and a hard point for connecting to the company. That would be harder to get into, I think the washing machine and dryers are the weak points.

Orwell meant buy your own washing machine.

[thetan]

i'd be more concerned about carrying an RFID device/card more then i would be concerned about laundry working or not. RFID can be used to triangulate your position relatively trivially. So it boils down to walking around with a card/device that is constantly beaconing your current position, so i'll have to pass.

[Goatboy]

Hypothetically, you could also try to physically bypass the wireless aspect. At it's core, the machine is still a washer. This means that although you need to pay, there is still a mechanism that tells it to start. You could try going in at a time when nobody else is likely to be there, and tinker with it. Or you could pretend to be a serviceman (since they are down a lot anyways, nobody would ask) and take a look at them.

Hypothetically, of course.

[DamegedSpy]

ONOZ the new 2.6K Hz is coming to a Laundry Store near you!

Well you could see how it works like Goatboy suggested and hypothetically be able to replicate a signal and inject it like a legitimate one.(Again Hypothetically)

In theory you should even be able to make a laundry blue box. xD

Now you could hypothetically go war driving and hypothetically break into the network.
Once inside you could hypothetically sniff traffic and search for a patter.(Giving enough patience)
Once you found a patter you could hypothetically be able to inject signals and hypothetically bypass the security measure.
For the other part. lulz, I never used so many "hypothetically" in a post.

[insomaniacal]

It seems that no matter how you approach this, it'll be sort of difficult.

What do you mean by modified? Like as in the company made their own proprietary version of the iee standard? If so, then it's probably no good to try to sniff data. A long period of time with physical access could work, though I'm guessing that it's probably started with an integrated circuit, rather than just a button that completes the circuit. Still, your best bet is information and model numbers, and research. We're pretty much taking stabs in the dark for now.