I lost money because my petrol pump was hacked by attendants!

The neighborhood petrol pump which I occasional use, was in the news for allegedly tampering with the meter readings. Some of the staffers had hacked the circuitry to modify the pulser readings which converted the flow volume to the digital readout. As a consequence, 5% of the bill value was inflated. Hacking is typically associated with software and remote Internet connections, but all sort of meter readings can be tampered with to skim small sums of money or develop glitches that result in inflated bills.

The only way to tackle such misuse is by surprise calibration checks and stringent penalties. In the case of the above petrol pump, the ingenious system also had a switch to toggle back to normal values during a calibration inspection.

The police believes that this particular fraud may be widespread, which simply demonstrates the ease with which the perpetrator of the modified pulser is able to sell his invention without being caught.