What are the pumps even using Bluetooth for?
I suspect it might've been something like a default feature of the embedded PC that they didn't bother to disable, so you can "plug in" a BT keyboard / mouse and take control of the system.
I suspect it might've been something like a default feature of the embedded PC that they didn't bother to disable, so you can "plug in" a BT keyboard / mouse and take control of the system.
One of the guys I went to high school with worked the swing shift at a gas station in our town. The shift was 11pm-11am. It was a small town so the gas station rarely had any business after midnight. I guess the guy got bored and started reading all the manuals the manager had in his office.
To this day, I'm not even sure how he did it, but he managed to change the price of gas/gallon on two of the four pumps down to 5 cents a gallon. Then he proceeded to call all his friends and family to come fill up for almost nothing. He reverted it back sometime around 5 or 6am. It took the station a few months to figure out what had happened, but by then, we both had graduated and were on to college. I remember running into him at a bar when I was home and he told me the whole story.
When I worked there (before he was working the night shift) I remember there was a box on the floor by the cash register which displayed the price of gas. It had a sizable chunk of cables going in and out of the box, along with some buttons on top near the display. The manager at the time told explicitly not to fuck around with that box, its a federal crime and I will go to jail. I'm guessing the guy figured out how to change the price from that box.
To this day, I still have no idea how he did it.
Your story is from the 1990s, just based on the state of technology we can assume that the pump prices were set at a computer inside the station that wasn't networked. The computer probably had a modem that called headquarters once a day to upload information, but the manager directly edited the prices when there was need to change prices.
Note that the manager drives around to look at the posted prices on all stations around. The manager is not allowed to talk to the managers of each station as this would violate federal monopoly laws (this does happen all the time, but legally they cannot do it and that is policy any chain will have - they may or may not ignore a manager ignoring the law depending on if they think they would be caught).
I'm sure gas stations do illegal collusion all the time in some towns. However it is illegal and so at least some station managers will not do it and all company policies will say drive.
The industry is too huge to just give up.
No jndi hotspots
Not to say no one did that, but it seems pretty stupid to integrate that into the pump itself (as well as extra trouble).
Seems like if someone wanted to do that, it would be far easier to those companies to just ship a Raspberry Pi-sized device and bolt it to the side/top of the pump, or put it up in the canopy with the lights.
A data gathering system wouldn't need client connections nor would it realistically even be connected to the pump controls.
They're just accessing some Bluetooth service interface for the pump.
Bluetooth® technology supports transmit powers from -20 dBm (0.01 mW) to +20 dBm (100 mW).
With a keyboard I guess you could use a sequence to pop up certain windows and run certain commands.
I wouldn't base a national franchise's business on what BT 5.0's 'up to' states, but it's not impossible that they would rely on at least 50 meters working. I can think of very few gas stations that have a separation from pump to cashier of more than that and most of them are truck stops.