These Guys Figured Out a Way to Get Endless Free McDonald’s

Last November, software developers Lenny Bakkalian and David Albert discovered two loopholes in the German McDonald’s system which allowed them to order an endless supply of free food. Recently, I met the two Hamburglars and their colleague Mats Tesch at an East Berlin McDonald’s so they could show me how they did it. McDonald’s receipts in Germany end with a link to a survey page.

Once you take the survey, you receive a coupon code for a free small beverage, redeemable within a month. One day, David happened to be checking out how the website’s coding was structured when he noticed that the information triggering the server to issue a new voucher was always the same. That meant he could build a programme replicating the code, as if someone was taking the survey again and again.

But who wants unlimited drinks with nothing to sink your teeth into? ‘I played around with the coupon generator and, after about five hours, I discovered another vulnerability,’ he explained – a vulnerability that allowed them to order free food.

Source: vice.com