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Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them (www.404media.co)

submitted 6 months ago by btp@kbin.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 298 points 6 months ago

This story should be on every newspaper front page right below war correspondents.

[-] Lev_Astov@lemmy.world 34 points 6 months ago

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.

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[-] BloodSlut@lemmy.world 292 points 6 months ago

"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."

[-] Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 156 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Dear Reader,

Regarding your recent free and non-profitable un-fucking of our problem, please use the honor system and manually refuck yourself.

Love, Technology Companies.

[-] thefartographer@lemm.ee 13 points 6 months ago

Someone's gonna figure out a horror movie for this called The Refucker

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[-] Jessvj93@lemmy.world 57 points 6 months ago

"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."

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 182 points 6 months ago

That's awesome. Man, fuck that company. Bricking a train? Outrageous.

[-] Bizarroland@kbin.social 85 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] SpookyUnderwear@eviltoast.org 35 points 6 months ago

This is the kind of government intervention I can get behind. This story is so outrageous, it's hard to believe it's true.

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[-] thefartographer@lemm.ee 47 points 6 months ago

Run by fucking criminals. We should brick them like they're The Sticky Bandits

[-] AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social 13 points 6 months ago

Better to brick them like The Cask of Amontillado.

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[-] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 171 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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

[-] khannie@lemmy.world 38 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] YoorWeb@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago

https://youtube.com/@mediacccde

[-] Holyginz@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Went to subscribe to it until I remembered i don't speak German lol

[-] example@reddthat.com 17 points 6 months ago

nearly all talks are either in English or have English translations. not sure if they're available on YouTube but you should be able to find everything on https://media.ccc.de

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[-] pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 6 months ago

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

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[-] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 107 points 6 months ago

Nowadays satire can never be as good as reality is.

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[-] Syo@kbin.social 92 points 6 months ago

Steam engine breaks, you can fix it.

Steam engine with digital circuit breaks, you're a hacker, a pirate. DRM was a mistake.

[-] Player2@sopuli.xyz 51 points 6 months ago

But how else could companies make more money off of something you already paid for? Will someone think of the shareholders‽

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[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 91 points 6 months ago

This reminds me of the hacked McDonalds ice cream machines. Except the shitty manufacturers won that one.

[-] damirK@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago

Sadly they will probably win this as well. Some claim there could safety concerns and it isn’t certified or could damage their brand… time for people’s manufacturing of products? Hehe

[-] psud@aussie.zone 19 points 6 months ago

I think this one might go well. Company preventing a country's trains from being serviced by a third party. I expect that train builder has already tanked their business, but it would be an interesting one to be litigated, the sort of case that can get the law changed

[-] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

But if the people controlled the means of production... that would be...

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[-] WashedOver@lemmy.ca 81 points 6 months ago

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...

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 24 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] WashedOver@lemmy.ca 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

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[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 78 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

https://dragonsector.pl/

Edit: Socials of those who worked on it

https://social.hackerspace.pl/@q3k
https://infosec.exchange/@mrtick
https://infosec.exchange/@redford

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

TIL 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.

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[-] sanqueue@lemmy.world 64 points 6 months ago

This is good. Someone did that for printers too

[-] Lemminary@lemmy.world 41 points 6 months ago

And American Weight (?) digital scales. The ones that brick themselves after 2,000 uses because how dare you only pay once.

[-] jucelc@lemmy.wtf 31 points 6 months ago

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.

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[-] Ruscal@sh.itjust.works 64 points 6 months ago

https://badcyber.com/dieselgate-but-for-trains-some-heavyweight-hardware-hacking/ link for very detailed description of this story, highly recommend the read!

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[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 64 points 6 months ago

The anti-circumvention clause is being abused for some years now, it's disgusting.

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[-] Dio9sys@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 6 months ago

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!

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 35 points 6 months ago

I hate this fucking planet.

[-] DuckOverload@lemmy.world 26 points 6 months ago

I think this is pretty cool. Sure, capitalists are gonna capitalist, but here we have subversive moves in a positive direction.

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 26 points 6 months ago

If they required the trains to be serviced by manufacturer they should have written it into a mandatory service contract at time of sales.

[-] alphacyberranger@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

If anybody wants to know more, they can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8NqBXT6Kos

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[-] simin@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago

the world's not one's to fix, learn to protect yourself.

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[-] btr_fan87@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Artificially bricked?! Who the hell keeps giving Viagra to trains? Evil bastards.

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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023

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