Tinkerers Are Taking Old Redbox Kiosks Home and Reverse Engineering Them

Otter@lemmy.ca to Technology@lemmy.world – 456 points – Tinkerers Are Taking Old Redbox Kiosks Home and Reverse Engineering Them
404media.co

The code that runs Redbox DVD rental machines has been dumped online, and, in the wake of the company’s bankruptcy, a community of tinkerers and reverse engineers are probing the operating system to learn how it works. Naturally, one of the first things people did was make one of the machines run Doom.

As has been detailed in several great articles elsewhere, the end of Redbox has been a clusterfuck, with pharmacies, grocery stores, and other retailers stuck with very large, heavy, abandoned DVD rental kiosks. To many people’s surprise, many of the kiosks remain operational even with the bankruptcy of Redbox’s parent company, which has led some people to “liberate” DVDs from the abandoned kiosks. Reddit is full of posts by people who say they have taken dozens of DVDs from kiosks all over the country.

In a Discord community called “Redbox Tinkering,” a FAQ states “just ask the store manager if you can have it. They will most likely tell you to just take it, but don’t just take it without asking.”

“Use heavy or appliance hand-trucks/dolly to wheel it onto your trailer or out to your truck,” the FAQ says. “It is heavy, so be prepared. I pull it right onto the trailer and strap it down standing up. You can lay them down, but know that most of the discs will be in disarray when you open it. Take everything having to do with Redbox, don’t leave a mess.” The FAQ also contains information about how to disconnect the Redbox from its power supply and how to cut through the bolts that secure the kiosk to concrete with a grinder. It also has information about how to open and disassemble the device at home.

“Unlike most tinkerer's my main goal isn't to reverse engineer the Official Software more than I have to. I am mainly interested in carousel movement, movie retrieving/returning, etc. I am using the machine to make my own version of the App to effectively do the same thing the original software does, but with my own spin on it. I mainly want to use it to create a massive DVD/Blu-Ray storage machine with ease of use for retrieving the movies.”

“I work in IT and have a decent sized Homelab and I've always been interested in making things work again once they break,” they added.

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It’s crazy to me that a company can just abandon hundreds (or thousands?) of 700 pound machines all over the place like this. I feel like there should be some kind of court order for the person last in charge of the company to drive the fuck around the country and clean up their mess.

I got downvoted for this before, but, when you sublet your property like this, you take on an inherent risk. This isn't any different to a bad tenant, or an investment not panning out.

Any business who accepted these red boxes should have either a) established contingency with Redbox themselves or, failing that, b) established a contingency through their own means by keeping liquidity to handle disposal of the machine (or something like insurance)

Don't feel sorry for these businesses, they took a calculated risk, likely made lots of money over the last decade, and now are faced with potentially needing to use some of that revenue to dispose of the machines. Any normal business keeps assets and liquidity available to cover expenses of doing business, the same way a landlord needs to use some rent money to clean up after a bad tenant, it's part of their business model. If a business thought these machines would just live there forever and magically go away when they aren't making money anymore, that's their fault.

These things happen more often than people assume. In these scenarios the asset usually has some value. So you need to contact the company, and send a certified letter stating "in x amount of time(2 weeks is usually the norm) if this is not removed from the premises it will be disposed of" Then you just wait for no response and sell it or have someone take it for free.

This happens a lot with small trash companies that go out of business. In my experience there is a 50/50 chance that they or whoever bought their carcass will answer and claim the equipment.

Most likely, they simply thought the machines would live long enough to be the next guy's problem.

I'm also not sure "just ask the store manager if you can have it" is a good idea. It's not theirs, and even though Redbox is going through bankruptcy it's still an asset of the company that can be liquidated to pay debts. Most likely no one will want to buy them, but just seems like a silly risk for tinkering's sake.

But it's abandoned on their property. If you abandoned something on a commercial property and never came to reclaim it, eventually (probably quite quickly) the store management would dispose of it. They're not going to keep it around stinking up the place forever "just in case."

I'd doubt somebody could officially just unilaterally throw the thing away, but the business on whose property it's parked absolutely has some kind of contingency to deal with crap left there by one of their vendors. Or they will if they're a retail operation worth a damn.

yeah I'm sure there is a contract and/or standard legal processes that covers this situation. I'm just saying I wouldn't rely on a casual interaction with a store manager to cover my ass legally, all for the benefit of putting Doom on a computer kiosk, or outright taking dozens of DVDs.

Mate who's going to pay the lawyer fee to track down a single asset when the company is gone gone.

What do you mean? Administrators/liquidators will have an entire list of assets owned by the bankrupt company.

They will be looking for a buyer to take on the whole company (assets and liabilities) or sell off the assets to cover liabilities.

Those boxes are still owned, they didn't magically become fair game because the company owning them went bankrupt.

If people advertise that they stole one of these boxes, they become fair game to be pursued by the liquidators/administrators or any entity buying the ownership of them.

Doing nothing costs a whole lot more than doing something, and then potentially risking getting sued.

Also no random manager is going to take that personal risk. They get paid like 40k a year.

The article also linked to this Mastodon post where someone has been sharing their findings

https://digipres.club/@foone/113313513964826090

One potential concern is

the fact that Redbox machines contain a file that has “a complete list of titles ever rented, and the email addresses of the people who rented them, and where and when.” She also found that the first six and last four digits of credit card information was logged. She said that the records on the particular unit that she was looking at contained 2,471 different transactions and had records on it dating back to 2015.

This is definitely a concern, but so long as this data isn’t pooled, we’re mostly fine. Credit card fraud is usually an hour of frustration per person. However, stalking certainly received a fresh new method.

Ok WTF. Unencrypted PII on prem, just out in a hostile public environment???

I want to see one of these bad boys outside on someone's lawn next to their free literature box. Fill it with some DVDs and Blurays, let people take and add whatever they like, see what happens.

People will definitely add porn

Or religious sludge

Not uncommon at all to find religious BS in those little libraries. I haven't come across any porn yet

The last lending library I saw had some religious discs placed inside them. Expected them to be of the usual Christian variety. Oddly enough, it was actually of some rabbi.

I was under the impression that Judaism wasn't about proselytising. 🤷

Only one way to find out 😃. It sounds like we think religious sludge porn will be the predominant genre for at least one redbox

Goes bankrupt but my cellular carrier keeps pushing Redbox. Just got text today trying to switch me to a plan I already have (that dumb enough) but part of the plan comes with free Redbox rentals. I hate Redbox, hell I looked at one thier machines once, ( this was years ago.) And it was filled with the worse movies you could imagine. Not one blockbuster or great films. No wonder they are going under. But are they still being offered because my cellular carrier still sends me free codes once a month?

Convert the code into a holy relic that will be used to unlock the doors to the Redbox mausoleum we will build with the rest of the machines.

Okay I will start saving the codes. Didn't think to do so now I will.

Didn't take long for someone to install doom.

But can it run Crysis?

wraps chain around Redbox at closed grocery store and attaches it to truck tow

Like this, right?

I found one that was still on and running this past week. I doubt it actually worked, but there was nothing indicating that it didn't

I'm interested to hear what the deal is now with all those damn "EcoATM" cell phone buying kiosks now, because to my knowledge those were operated by the same outfit (Outerwall) as Redbox is/was. Are they bankrupt, too? My local Dollar General has had one squatting in their foyer for over a year with an out of order sign taped to it and apparently nobody from the mothership has noticed or cares.

Those damn things are theoretically full of cash.