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Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

badcyber.com

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

#51

Post by soco »

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…

You could say that about most software where the fresher the framework the more glaring the holes - here's a recent post about it: "Software disenchantment" https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/

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

#52

Post by nielsole »

kibwen wrote: post #32
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.

code escrow in general should be much more common.

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

#54

Post by mannykannot »

HPsquared wrote: post #7
greesil wrote: post #4

But was this sabotage by an insider at the manufacturer, or something deliberate by the manufacturer?

If the manufacturer did it, doesn't it still fit the definition? It's something like "deliberately causing something to fail", regardless of who does it.

The higher-up the decision went, the worse it is.

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

#55

Post by ddoice »

konschubert wrote: post #48
yard2010 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The west is the least corrupt part of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#/...

perception != reality

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

#56

Post by hk__2 »

h2odragon wrote: post #46
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.

"the responsible persons" ... hmmm. Who would that be? The programmer who implemented the code? Do you think they thunk these tricks up? They was just following orders. The manager of the programming team, who set these tricks as things that needed to be implemented? Again, just following orders. The "Cxx" Title people who directed that there be "some protection" in some way that got implemented as what we see? Did t…

> They was just following orders.

In itself that’s not enough to be considered innocent.

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

#57

Post by terminous »

verisimi wrote: post #36

[flagged]

It is clear you haven't even clicked on the article.

Shame on you. This deserves a ban from HN. Just reading the headlines and contributing to a discussion about that article as if you actually read it is deceptive and wrong. It's killing our ability to meaningfully discuss content when people just read the headlines. If you don't want to read articles and instead post about what you think the articles must be based on headlines, go elsewhere on the internet.

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

#58

Post by hk__2 »

ddoice wrote: post #55
konschubert wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west is the least corrupt part of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#/...

perception != reality

Perception is a proxy for reality, given that you can’t measure the latter.

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

#59

Post by verisimi »

danw1979 wrote: post #43
verisimi wrote: post #36

[flagged]

The article has nothing to do with pollution. The reference to Dieselgate might be because a geofencing condition was found in the code running the trains that caused certain misbehaviour when they were at the manufacturer’s competitor’s maintenance depots.

I accept being pulled up - I should have read the article!

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

#60

Post by chongli »

martijnvds wrote: post #45
twisteriffic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad software is a symptom, not the cause.

What is the cause then?

Bad culture that views software as a necessary evil or afterthought rather than an important part of the product.
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