To demonstrate the flaws, software developer and security hobbyist William Turner had taken advantage of security weaknesses and hacked a transport card to boost its monetary value to a staggering $167,769.85, and by the same means ran it into the red to the tune of nearly three million dollars.
"If we have physical access to a card we can reprogram it with a balance (because) they are using old standards, default keys and there's no encryption stored on the data on the cards," Turner told delegates at Kiwicon in Wellington."