Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

badcyber.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 309 posts

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#31

Post by HPsquared »

InCityDreams wrote: post #23
snthd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The train manufacturer, Newag, also competed in the tender to carry out the maintenance, but the manufacturer’s bid was about 750k USD higher and the tender was eventually won by SPS, which offered to carry out the maintenance of 11 trains for around 5.5 mln USD.

Every once in a while there comes a point where the discussion of high-currency-shorthand pops up: >5.5 mln USD. U$5.5m? Not saying I'm more correct than anyone else, but the former seems outlandishly long.

5.5 millidollars?

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#32

Post by kibwen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #30

Great advert for free and open source software. As with dieselgate, this suggests you basically cannot trust anything containing software. Can't trust it to follow regulations. Can't trust it to do its job. Can't trust the software. Can't trust the institutions that write the software. All very "late stage capitalist software development".

Hell, even if governments are squeamish about requiring code to be fully open and public, they can still require the manufacturers to privately submit to the government all code that powers public infrastructure (like trains), to be made available to any relevant party upon request.

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#33

Post by twisteriffic »

lqet wrote: post #28

My impression is that the quality of train firmware is generally not very good, and I hope that this scandal will lead to greater scrutiny. 3 years ago, Deutsche Bahn publicly complained of "grotesque" software problems with newly delivered Bombardier trains. For example, when train drivers changed the direction of travel, the train software would crash. It then took 1 hour to boot the train up again [0]. Switzerland…

Bad software is a symptom, not the cause.

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#34

Post by bauble »

formerly_proven wrote: post #9

Dieselgate isn't a good comparison because in Dieselgate the equipment functioned normally from the user's point of view.

I thought it was a good reference. In both cases, the manufacturer placed illicit, hidden code that that could (and probably should) get it in trouble with the law.

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#35

Post by snthd »

InCityDreams wrote: post #23
snthd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The train manufacturer, Newag, also competed in the tender to carry out the maintenance, but the manufacturer’s bid was about 750k USD higher and the tender was eventually won by SPS, which offered to carry out the maintenance of 11 trains for around 5.5 mln USD.

Every once in a while there comes a point where the discussion of high-currency-shorthand pops up: >5.5 mln USD. U$5.5m? Not saying I'm more correct than anyone else, but the former seems outlandishly long.

mln is from the Polish original.

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#37

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #30

Great advert for free and open source software. As with dieselgate, this suggests you basically cannot trust anything containing software. Can't trust it to follow regulations. Can't trust it to do its job. Can't trust the software. Can't trust the institutions that write the software. All very "late stage capitalist software development".

[deleted]

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#38

Post by ZeroGravitas »

yetihehe wrote: post #22
sgt101 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because the equipment changed dependent on context. In Dieselgate the cars changed their engine management when they got into a test cycle...

Dieselgate was about cheating environment sensors. This is more like DeereGate, locking out external service shops but even when you are supposed by law to allow them service (and even after providing them 20k page service manuals which they are supposed to follow to make appropriate service, but you lock them out anyway).

From my reading, they also seem to have seeded apparently random failures into the product, with a hidden reset key combo, even for those using them as support. Possibly to make themselves look good (our products may break randomly, but at least we fixed the "problem" quickly) going into the tendering process for support.

Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

#39

Post by xbar »

yard2010 wrote: post #27
HackerThemAll wrote: post #24

In a properly functioning country the responsible persons should already be imprisoned. Some governmental agencies were aware of that for at least half a year, but failed to act. The fact that source code was not immediately dumped and analyzed is the evidence of malevolence, corruption and intentionally putting people's lives at risk. Welcome to the dark side of Poland - where citizens don't matter.

Corruption is not just the dark side of Poland, but the entire west IMHO

The other 3 directions are corruption-free?
Post reply on HN