Seems like deliberate sabotage via software to force the costumer to buy the manufacturer’s services instead of 3rd party (cheaper) ones.
Curious to see the court’s decision.
Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
61–70 of 309 posts
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#62Its insane how brazen this is. Code that 'bricks' the train locomotive if its gps coordinates remain with bounds of a competing repair facility for more than ten days! This is way beyond putting information barriers to repair, like undocumented interfaces or even crypto-signed firmware. This is actively malicious destruction of property. I don't know anything about the legal system in Poland, but I can't imagine how this gets by.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#63Its insane how brazen this is. Code that 'bricks' the train locomotive if its gps coordinates remain with bounds of a competing repair facility for more than ten days! This is way beyond putting information barriers to repair, like undocumented interfaces or even crypto-signed firmware. This is actively malicious destruction of property. I don't know anything about the legal system in Poland, but I can't imagine how…
If an individual did this, they'd go to prison.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#64My 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…
Because this software is not made by software engineers, it's made by plc programmers, electric circuit designers and whoever did drift into the field.
Except for beckhoff to tc3 they haven't made it to object orientation yet, so the field is stuck as a whole in the blue screen mines of yore. Managing complexity with thin standard docs, no version control while the machines grow ever more complex sensor and actuator wise..
You can not treat modern machines like small embedded hobby devices - but the industry does.
Some outside-programmers make good money coming in and solving these yesterday's problems with proper software architecture and good c development practices. But the industries doesn't learn from this. Making software will forever not be a profession for them.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#65Great 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".
I'm all for free and open source software, but what would you suggest here? That train operators will download code from the internet and install it on their trains?
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#66[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.
Much like detecting if their cars was setup in an emissions testing scenario and changing the engine behaviour.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#67Great 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.
An organisation that is prepared to write "sabotage" software would have no problem deploying software that is different to the software they submit.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#68It's one thing to implement a secret handshake and underdocument some procedures to make your competitors look incompetent, but actively breaking your product when it's in your competitor's shop - that reqires some chutzpah.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345858
Exactly what I immediately thought of as well.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#69My 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…
Sometimes low-tech is just better. Here in Finland we got Sr1 electric trains from the Soviet Union in the 70's, and after some renovations the model is likely to stay in use at least until 2030.
Re: Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking
#70Great 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.
then you just need to bribe the code reviewer(s).
open source is still the better answer, good luck bribing every member of the public who could potentially read public code.