A team of university students in Sydney have cracked the secret algorithm used on Sydney's public transport tickets for buses, trains and ferries, which they say could allow them to print their own tickets.

The students – Damon Stacey, Dougall Johnson, Karla Burnett and Theo Julienne – presented their research at the Ruxcon security conference in Melbourne last month but did not name the organisation affected, a common practice for ethical "white hat" security researchers not wishing to do damage to an organisation.

Since the talk was delivered and reported by specialist IT security publication SCMagazine, Transport for NSW has owned up to being the affected organisation in an emailed statement to Fairfax, in which it said it had met with the group and taken steps to minimise the risk of fare evasion. For "security purposes" it said it didn't want to provide any detail about what action it had taken or what measures were in place to prevent fraud.

In an email interview with Fairfax, Mr Julienne, of UNSW, said he and the other researchers took about 1000 used tickets purchased over about five years and analysed the data on them to work out how it was stored and encrypted.