Pepsi machines hacked

One of the more bizarre stories of the semester takes petty larceny to a new level. The month of March found a rare niche for small-time thieves on the Michigan Tech campus.

“Coke and I, we were with a service guy over at the EERC when we first found out about the problem,” said Jim Holmquist, general manager at Pepsi-Cola of Houghton. “We first thought they were shaking the machines, so we took spare Coke machine shelves, which are longer than the Pepsi machine ones, and taped them in the back of the machines to stop the bottles from falling back.” What they found, however, was a situation more sinister.

What Holmquist and the other local distributors discovered was a Web link being distributed across campus explaining how to “hack” glass-front Pepsi machines. It showed students how to essentially, get a free bottle of soda.

First, the user pays for a soda and selects it from the menu. When the machine brings the bottle to the access slot the user puts their hand in and stops the basket. This causes the bottle not to be delivered. The money is returned. Then they pay for a bottle again, make their selection, and as the bottle is dropped into the catch basket it falls out (as the basket isn’t designed for two bottles). The original bottle is delivered and on the return motion to the home position the basket jams (because of the second bottle). This causes the basket arm to not return and the machine returns the user’s money. Therefore, a free bottle of Pepsi product is gotten.

The issue is that jamming the machine causes stress to the motors, belts and water pumps that run the delivery mechanism. Doing this more than once ends up breaking belts, drying pumps, and eventually destroying the motors – Pepsi-Cola of Houghton had to replace $800 in parts on the two week-old machine in Walker.

Other buildings, the EERC and Fisher specifically, have also had more than their share of maintenance calls. “We’d get calls three times a day to the EERC,” Holmquist said, “and have been to Fisher a lot as well.” The EERC machine has been particularly vulnerable because it’s in a less-than-visible location and no surveillance cameras could be mounted near the area. “We asked, but they said it would be an invasion of privacy,” offered Holmquist.

Where there is a crack, however, there is usually a patch. This came in the form of software technicians from the Pepsi machine producers. As of Monday, all of the machines had been retrofitted with new software which will stop users from jamming the machines’ delivery baskets. It came at a necessary time, too – Holmquist was preparing to remove the machines from their campus locations due to the high rate of vandalism. “It was just getting to cost us too much and the school as well.” He said.

The machines will, however, stay on campus for the time being. As long as the vandalism slows or ideally ceases, the distributor won’t have to remove them. Therefore, Holmquist requests, students should be on the lookout for suspicious activity near the newer-looking glass-front Pepsi machines, and should report attempts at vandalism to building office personnel or to Campus Security.