A federal court Sunday stopped MIT students from demonstrating how to subvert Boston's subway payment system after the Massachusetts transit authority Friday said such information would "inflict serious damage."

In a scheduled slide presentation to be shown at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, three students outlined how Boston's CharlieCard and CharlieTicket subway payment systems could be subverted, including creating passenger cards, duplicating magnetic strips and interfering with wireless card readers.

In response to the court order, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it will attempt to overturn the restraining order, saying the court action could chill future security research.