Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
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.
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.
This story should be on every newspaper front page right below war correspondents.
Yeah, especially in the EU where apparently their laws regarding circumventing DRM might make the people who fixed this the bad guys instead of this comically evil manufacturer who put GPS kill switches on public passenger trains.
right below war correspondents
Eh, they should report war on the same page as the weather if you ask me.
"We didn't add a kill switch to our trains to force the use of our maintenance service, but fuck the hackers that removed the kill switch we didn't implement, and the trains that were hacked and don't have the kill switch we didn't add should be removed from service."
"And how dare those hackers go through all the trouble of finding those (literal) GPS coordinates of train maintenance centers not in our system to circumvent us getting more money."
That's awesome. Man, fuck that company. Bricking a train? Outrageous.
Poland ought to ban that company from ever working or operating or selling any products inside of its country and any trains made by that company that are not currently owned by Poland should be prevented from traveling on the tracks that cross through Poland.
This is the kind of government intervention I can get behind. This story is so outrageous, it's hard to believe it's true.
Maybe make it the entire executive and senior management, rather than the company.
I feel like train operators will have heard of this, and will not be accepting that company's tenders
Realistically, that would be quite an overreaction and the corporation does have valuable knowledge and skill in creating trains. But how great it would be if this were to cause open source code to be a requirement...
Run by fucking criminals. We should brick them like they're The Sticky Bandits
Better to brick them like The Cask of Amontillado.
Great idea, Marv.
The person is doing a talk about it in hamburg, germany (37c3) next week. Its on my to watch list because that sounds hella interresting.
Edit : 37c3 list of talks : https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/#dec115da17562cebafa9ba7a150a4fc607c25c880c03593dcc8da6087c9441a4
That actually does sound hella interesting. I'm saving your comment to try to remember but actually look it up in about two years when I scroll back though my saved posts.
Same, same.
Does Lemmy not have a "remind me" bot yet?
It's 37c3, but thx for the hint. The talk is called Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains by Redford, q3k, MrTick
I will try to watch it on stage, unfortunately still no final schedule available
Fixed the edition number. I always forget what number we are at haha. I will not be on site, but i saved it in my planner : https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/#dec115da17562cebafa9ba7a150a4fc607c25c880c03593dcc8da6087c9441a4
Nowadays satire can never be as good as reality is.
Trump and the whole Brexit circus have set a very high bar, but somehow someone still manages to produce quality comedy.
Steam engine breaks, you can fix it.
Steam engine with digital circuit breaks, you're a hacker, a pirate. DRM was a mistake.
But how else could companies make more money off of something you already paid for? Will someone think of the shareholders‽
If you're allowed to do any maintenance you want on the physical components of something you own, then you should be allowed to do any maintenance you want on the software components of something you own.
It's not hacking (in the sense of "unauthorized intrusion") if you own it or have authorization to do it from the owner of 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...
Oh don't count GM and a Ford out of it. They're already kicking android auto and Apple car to the curb so they can control more stuff and get access to more data. The savvier they get the closer that comes to reality.
Of course, by the end of our lives you won't own a car at all. You'll subscribe to a car company that will act like a hybrid ride share and rental program. Commutes will be on a rideshare basis and you'll be able to rent a car for a weekend road trip.
I just heard about GM this morning in my tech news. I didn't realize that about Ford too.
I've drawn a line in the sand with my vehicles at about 2011 for tech. I love tech and I love cars but just not into the current versions of everything being touch screen controls.
Give me knobs for climate controls, gear shifters, and gauges for the rest. They don't need all of these computer systems that fail or become outdated as soon as they are released like the manufacturer's nav systems. We also don't need them to stop working completely because a sensor failed and can only be replaced by the dealer.
My phone in a holder can be the smartest part of the car for me thanks.
If the manufacturer can stop your trains, then obviously anyone with the necessary hacking skills can do it too. Certain governments might be very interested in tampering with the logistics of another country.
SPS became desperate and Googled “Polish hackers” and came across a group called Dragon Sector, a reverse-engineering team made up of white hat hackers.
Hilarious. I hope 404 continues with this level of high quality journalism.
Dragon sector, who they hired, is a security capture the flag team.
Edit: Socials of those who worked on it
https://social.hackerspace.pl/@q3k
https://infosec.exchange/@mrtick
https://infosec.exchange/@redfordTIL that [security CTF](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag_(cybersecurity\)) is
an exercise in which participants attempt to find text strings, called "flags", which are secretly hidden in purposefully-vulnerable programs or websites
Never heard of this and I may not be alone in that. Thanks for pointing this out.
Finally, hackers with a cool name, like Bellingcat or Oryx. It's all I'm asking for, but the Russian and North Korean hackers are so disappointing in so many ways.
When the government bankrolls you, you're not allowed to have fun.
This is good. Someone did that for printers too
And American Weight (?) digital scales. The ones that brick themselves after 2,000 uses because how dare you only pay once.
Lol. Always suspected there was a scam there, but every time I bring it up in a conversation - people just call me a conspiracy theorist.
This goes for pretty much everything though. Planned obsolescence is real, but people think it's just the natural way of things.
https://badcyber.com/dieselgate-but-for-trains-some-heavyweight-hardware-hacking/ link for very detailed description of this story, highly recommend the read!
Thank you! Came here to ask if anyone had one source with the whole story. This keeps trickling out as it evolves.
Edit: this story is considerably weirder than I expected, and I was already expecting some weird shit.
Begs the question: How is any of this legal?
I would assume it is not, UE has some strict rules about fair competition, but the problem is to prove that in the court. Newag is arguing that the hacked and reverse engineered code is not the code they have. Probably in the meantime they run the cleaning protocol in the company...
But company's public image will hopefully suffer from the story, maybe at least they loose in eyes of potential buyers.
The anti-circumvention clause is being abused for some years now, it's disgusting.
This is the sort of case that can fix it
Is it abuse, or is it working exactly as intended?
They mean it's abusive in nature I guess
So which anti-circumvention clause do you mean?
Remember, US law doesn't apply in Europe and as much as I know there is nothing like that in the EU.
I like how, instead of recognizing that they got caught, now the train manufacturer is claiming this is some kind of dark PR strategy.
If it is, then please show the public that it's a dark PR strategy by explaining the hidden unlock codes and the DRM code!
I hate this fucking planet.
I think this is pretty cool. Sure, capitalists are gonna capitalist, but here we have subversive moves in a positive direction.
Oh yeah what the people did to get around this is fucking awesome I do love that side of this story don't get me wrong.
If they required the trains to be serviced by manufacturer they should have written it into a mandatory service contract at time of sales.
If anybody wants to know more, they can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8NqBXT6Kos
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=w8NqBXT6Kos
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Artificially bricked?! Who the hell keeps giving Viagra to trains? Evil bastards.
Where did the independent repair shop and cracker smackers touch you on the doll NEWAG 14WE EMU
Sir Toppam Hat
Spewing bs about how they can't guarantee the safety and other outrageous shit pouring out their mouths as they provide clearly practiced lawyerspeak to squeeze money from public service into their owners pockets which will then be invested probably in war and killing children for profit.
But let's discuss ethics and shit! Fuck faces need to be brought to moral justice for the evil they commit every day of their brainwashed miserable hateful lives where they pretend to not harm people because they don't do it themselves but via money grabbing schemes. One day all of this shit will seem to be as stupid as hitting kids are these days
Every time I read about this kerfuffle, I am astounded by the sheer stupidity of the manufacturer. Even if they may be technically in the right here(I don't know, since the contracts they have with the operator aren't public), they effectively shoot themselves in the foot with this PR Desaster. Especially the various national rail operators across Europe will think twice about buying NEWAG, since these operators usually have their own maintenance and repair centers, and expect to service their rolling stock there. And those national operators still make up the lion's share of the European rail market.
This aint much of a problem. NEWAG operates almost exclusively on the internal market
I sure hope that they become a political talking point where the government loses votes if they contract with them again.
Most ethical vehicle manufacturer:
(This is a joke)
Apparently there was some kind of gps geo fencing going on - that the software detected the train went into an uncertified repair yard and bricked the thing. So I assume the hackers just purged that info, or unset the flags that denoted the brick condition so as far as the train software was concerned it was operating normally.
It's an interesting hack but there is a safety aspect to this too. A train is a complex machine that could go catastrophically wrong and kill a bunch of people. It's not quite Boeing 737 levels of safety criticality but neither is it something that should be taken lightly with regards to service procedure or parts procurement. So the manufacturer were being dicks to brick the train. But the train operator using an unauthorised repairer who might not have access to, let alone follow the correct servicing procedures or parts is not good either.
Is anyone else hearing Aquarela do Brasil or is it just me...