Thieves have stolen 600 gallons of fuel worth $1,800 from a Detroit gas station in an apparent case of fuel management system hacking.

The hack and subsequent theft took place at 1 p.m. June 23. with two men (pictured) reported to have led a convoy of 10 vehicles into a Marathon Gas Station in Detroit. Police aren’t entirely clear as to the nature of the hack but said the two men used some sort of device to hack the fuel management system, disabling the ability to cut off fuel supplies to the pumps.

The result is that for a period of 90 minutes in the middle of the day, 10 vehicles, one after the other, filled up their tanks and drove off without paying. The gas pumps in question were prepaid models that require users to pay for their gasoline prior to filling up.

A clerk interviewed by a local Fox affiliate said that the screens for the fuel management system went blank. “I tried to stop it but it didn’t work,” the clerk said. “I tried to stop it here from the screen but the screen’s not working. I tried to stop it from the system; nothing working.”

Oddly, the clerk didn’t immediately call the police, waiting until he obtained access to an emergency kit to shut the pumps down.

Although it may be some time until it’s officially known how the fuel management system was hacked in this case, software used by gas stations is known to be vulnerable to hacking. A report from security researchers in January detailed multiple vulnerabilities in one automated system used to control fuel prices and other information at thousands of gas stations around the world.

Those vulnerabilities included the ability for an attacker to shut down fuel pumps, hijack credit card payments and access gas station networks, as well as allow an attacker to alter fuel prices and steal gasoline.

Photo: Detroit Police