I can’t help but think this wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t try to implement smart features in pumps in order to serve us ads.
That’s what I start finding so glorious about all this ‘smart new world’ - it is just so obviously so dumb, it falls apart almost on its own. Smart checkout registers, smart gas pumps, yay. Watch it crumble in real-time.
If your gas pump has Bluetooth, it deserves to be hacked. Gas pumps do not need Bluetooth.
I looked this up to see why gas pumps would have bluetooth capabilities and found a fair bit of argument over whether the article is accurate. The linked article says it was identified as a bluetooth hack by the gas station operator based on security cam footage of the thief fiddling with a device near the pump, but I haven’t found anything discussing computer forensics yet. One post speculated that if they do have bluetooth capabilities it might be an unused feature included on cheap multipurpose chips, but I haven’t found any info stating that gas pumps utilize bluetooth for x reason. The pumps apparently often use the same physical keys (and have done for decades) so a tampered pump seems possible to me too.
