Bypassing Android MDM Using a $1.50 Electric Gas Lighter
A bit OT but this just reminded me of something I haven't thought about for many many years. Just wanted to share.<p>I bypassed the payment procedure in a coke vending machine with a lighter.<p>Germany, around 2004 we had a coke vending machine at school, probably from the mid 90s. Someone told me you get free coke if you flick a (non-piezo) lighter in front of the display at the right time. I didn't believe it one bit, but when I tried it, it actually worked. It quickly spread around our school until months later the service guy fixed it.<p>Many years later I realized what has happened. The flick of the lighter emitted a strong IR impulse that triggered an infrared receiver (which was probably used for debugging, configuring etc).<p>This must have caused an interrupt, and if triggered at the same time the machine vended the bottle, it completed vending but never got back to actually decrementing the money you put into it. You could empty out the whole machine with nothing else but 1 Euro and a lighter and you even got your money back.<p>Lots of cokes were had.