Article: Reveal contract details: Opposition

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Reveal contract details: Opposition

Reveal contract details: Opposition
Tony Moore | April 11, 2008 - 5:21PM

Queensland Transport and Cubic need to immediately make public the information ensuring that the Go Card system was not able to be cloned by hackers, Shadow Transport Minister Tim Nicholls said.

Mr Nicholls said he was shocked when he read claims by a security consultant and hacker that he had already cracked the Go card security security encryption.

Karsten Nohl, a security consultant and hacker who reverse-engineers high tech and secure systems, said Queensland's go card system was already obsolete because he - and others - had successfully cracked the card's security encryption.

"There will be a need to replace it soon so why even bother having it?" he told brisbanetimes.com.au.

Mr Nohl said it was a simple process to clone go cards using equipment freely available on the internet.

A cloned card would act exactly the same as the original and could be used to fraudulently ride public transport.

Mr Nicholls said as soon as the story was posted on brisbanetimes he received emails alerting to the comments.

"As soon as the story was posted on the site I received many emails telling me about the story," he said.

"I think this is a matter of concern when we spend $130 million on a system and a security consultant says it has already been hacked into and cloned."

Mr Nicholls said he wanted the state government to immediately release the contract with Cubic, the company which developed the system and outline what assurances the contractor Cubic Transportation Systems had given that the system was safe against fraud.

"Queensland commuters have been waiting a long time for the roll-out of the Go Card system," he said.

"Since its introduction we have had complaints the fare structure is unfair, the equipment doesn't work, availability is limited and the GPS location system is inaccurate. Now there is another problem with security.

"I call on the government to release the contract with Cubic so we can find out what is really going on with this lengthy and costly project."

He said the contract was varied in 2006 because it was originally considered that the Go Card would completely replace the "paper" tickets, which remain popular with commuters.