Photo: bossaudio.com
Next time you think of getting a vanity license plate that would, in one way or another, mess with the system, think again. Your choice might just land you in more trouble.
Joseph Tartaro, a hacker also known by the handle Droogie, thought he was real smart when he decided to register his vehicle with the DMW with the “NULL” plate in late 2016. Speaking at DefCon 2019 earlier this month, he said he assumed the license plate would virtually make him invisible with the system because, as we all know, “null” is undefined or empty is most programming languages.
Invisible, he is not. As per Wired, Tartaro told the crowd that things went very smoothly for the first year, during which time he had no traffic violations. Then, in 2017, he got a parking ticket and he went online to pay it. That first payment literally opened the gates of ticket hell, which made the system assign to his “NULL” license plate all tickets that had incomplete data.
Within days from the payment, he started receiving citations in the mail by the dozens. All came from a citation processing center, whose computerized system took all tickets written by police officers that didn’t include the tags of the offending vehicle and automatically associated them with his “NULL” plate. In other words, NULL in the ticket form became associated with Tartaro’s personal information, because of his license plate.
Before he knew it, Tartaro had over $12,000 in unpaid tickets for a variety of offenses throughout the state, in all makes of cars – despite the fact that he drives an Infiniti. He tried speaking with the manager of the company, the DMV and the police, and was repeatedly told he needed to change his tags. He refused: he hadn’t done anything wrong and he really liked his license plate.
Eventually, he managed to get DMV to clear more than half of those tickets, but by the time he showed up at DefCon, he still had about $6,000 left to pay. What was worse, despite the fact that the DMV understood what went wrong (hence the fact that they erased some of those tickets), the problem with the system was never fixed. Which leaves Tartaro still in ticket hell.
“At the moment, I cannot reregister my vehicle without paying the tickets,” he told the crowd at the event. “But I can’t pay the tickets because it admits guilt, and the minute I admit that it opens me up to all the other tickets. I’m basically in a really bad situation.”
Talk about a prank backfiring, big time.
Invisible, he is not. As per Wired, Tartaro told the crowd that things went very smoothly for the first year, during which time he had no traffic violations. Then, in 2017, he got a parking ticket and he went online to pay it. That first payment literally opened the gates of ticket hell, which made the system assign to his “NULL” license plate all tickets that had incomplete data.
Within days from the payment, he started receiving citations in the mail by the dozens. All came from a citation processing center, whose computerized system took all tickets written by police officers that didn’t include the tags of the offending vehicle and automatically associated them with his “NULL” plate. In other words, NULL in the ticket form became associated with Tartaro’s personal information, because of his license plate.
Before he knew it, Tartaro had over $12,000 in unpaid tickets for a variety of offenses throughout the state, in all makes of cars – despite the fact that he drives an Infiniti. He tried speaking with the manager of the company, the DMV and the police, and was repeatedly told he needed to change his tags. He refused: he hadn’t done anything wrong and he really liked his license plate.
Eventually, he managed to get DMV to clear more than half of those tickets, but by the time he showed up at DefCon, he still had about $6,000 left to pay. What was worse, despite the fact that the DMV understood what went wrong (hence the fact that they erased some of those tickets), the problem with the system was never fixed. Which leaves Tartaro still in ticket hell.
“At the moment, I cannot reregister my vehicle without paying the tickets,” he told the crowd at the event. “But I can’t pay the tickets because it admits guilt, and the minute I admit that it opens me up to all the other tickets. I’m basically in a really bad situation.”
Talk about a prank backfiring, big time.
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