In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.
After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.
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“You wouldn’t pirate a train”
“Train pirate” has got to be one of the steampunkiest job titles I’ve ever heard.
Is this a robbery?
No! It’s a science experiment… computer science!
Good opportunity for the new polish government to show that they’re actually sane.
The government better sue the train manufacturer and protect these hackers. The hackers saved the state millions - possibly hundreds of millions.
Holy shit. If I understand correctly, the trains were programmed to use their GPS sensors to detect if they were ever physically moved to an independent repair shop. If they detected that they were at an independent repair shop, they were programmed to lock themselves and give strange and nonsensical error codes. Typing in an unlock code at the engineer’s console would allow the trains to start working normally again.
If there were a corporation-sized mirror, I don’t know how NEWAG could look at itself in it.
I wonder if they were taking notes from John Deere and the automotive industry or will it be the reverse here soon?
Just imagine all these vehicles that could be bricked for not going back to the stealerships for outrageous prices on parts and incompetent service.
Also the vehicles that could be disabled for not paying for device protection plan that allows your vehicle to operate safely. It would be a shame if your vehicle stopped working on your way to work or the hospital.
I suspect Tesla, BMW, and John Deere are the closest to this reality.
I sure hope the government doesn’t help with another great cash for clunkers national program to get rid of more cars too old for these measures. Sure is a great way to drive new car sales though…
I wonder if they’ll be able to overclock those trains or install some mods.
I’m now imagining rgb trains. Mechanical turn styles, high refresh rate info screens, giant AIO coolers.
Plenty of modern rolling stock already has water cooled power electronics, oil-cooled transformers, and I’m sure there’s RGB passenger information displays.
They also laugh at your little 120/140/200mm fans.
Okay, but now we need to upgrade those industrial fans to noctua
Let me introduce you to ebm-pabst.
The trains run DOOM.
Maybe they can put some of these in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmrQ-xm546o
“The president of Newag contacted me,” Cieszyński wrote. "He claims that Newag fell victim to cybercriminals and it was not an intentional action by the company
Yes, those cybercriminals that once infiltrated in a business network, instead of stealing data or holding ransoms, hide multiple iterations in the code of a snippet that only benefits the corp. Sure, they exist
Also taking legal action against people who helped your customers resolve the consequences of such an attack seems perfectly normal and not at all contrary to that narrative.
It would be interesting to see if Alstom, Hyundai Rotem, and Stadler Rail are doing the same. They are sitting on billions in public sector contracts.
Stadler (sic)
?
The European Union is an antidemocratic corporate cartel.
Good thing it wasn’t the EU that made the trains 👌
Maybe you should stop huffing Orban’s farts.
No, I huff Marxist economist and ex-Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis’ farts.
Ah, those are extra spicy.
True, but that’s why it is somewhat functional. Otherwise it would be a mess, swinging back and forth between contradictory short term thinking.
The Arabian Gulf states are not democratic at all, and sometimes the governments go against the wishes of the people -mostly US-aligned foreign policies and social and economic liberalization-. But they sure can get shit done and massively. Kinda like China but on a smaller scale because all together the Arabian Gulf -without the foreigners- adds up to the population of one Chinese city.
lmao.