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Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking

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

#161

Post by konschubert »

waffleiron wrote: post #156
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#/...

Note from that wikipedia article >The Index only measures public sector corruption, ignoring the private sector. This, for instance, means the well-publicized Libor scandal, Odebrecht case and the VW emissions scandal are not counted as corrupt actions.

Because corruption is when state power is abused. When private companies do illegal shit it’s just a crime.

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

#162

Post by krisoft »

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…

> "the responsible persons" ... hmmm. Who would that be?

But that is the thing. We do not know who is responsible without an investigation.

We don't need to guess. The local responsible agency should get a warrant and take a copy of their code repo and their internal comms. And then they need to spend the time (call in experts if needed) to figure out what happened and who was involved.

If it is normal code development you can find all the paperwork which documents the change. If they tried to disguise it, (which they might have, or might not) then that is some maffioso stuff and you take the tools police use to break up organised crime groups. You take a low level person who you can incriminate and you flip them. You show them that you have enough to send them to a prison for years and offer them the opportunity to cooperate.

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

#163

Post by hulitu »

Log_out_ wrote: post #64
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…

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…

> 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.

There are more "engineers" writing software for your car or a train than "engineers" at Microsoft, Google, Apple or Facebook.

I don't think that someone will be happy when driving with 100 km/h on a highway, the car will suddenly decide to restart itself. There are bugs everywhere where profits are put before engineering but calling those people names is not constructive. Especially when they use SW created by "engineers" which crash with no apparent reason when they are doing their work.

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

#164

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

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…

In the case of Bombardier, I suspect contracting also contributes to the problem. The same for financial institutions.

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

#165

Post by waffleiron »

konschubert wrote: post #161
waffleiron wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note from that wikipedia article >The Index only measures public sector corruption, ignoring the private sector. This, for instance, means the well-publicized Libor scandal, Odebrecht case and the VW emissions scandal are not counted as corrupt actions.

Because corruption is when state power is abused. When private companies do illegal shit it’s just a crime.

There is no requirement for it to be "state" power, please look up the definition.

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

#166

Post by mavamaarten »

chronicsonic wrote: post #126
amelius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345858

That wasn’t intentional though.

Ooooops! Somebody put this delay here tooooootally by accident and nobody noticed it when shipping to production! Silly devs!

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

#167

Post by bee_rider »

hulitu wrote: post #150
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an individual did this, they'd go to prison.

It's funny how, in the western world, as a company, you can commit crimes and take a pat on the wrist, but, as an individual, you get to jail for the same crimes.

Sadly, the general populace didn’t hire lobbyists to represent them. Our representatives were supposed to be built into the system, but that unfortunately made them part of the game, rather than some of the players.

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

#168

Post by xg15 »

Xelbair wrote: post #149
dzdt wrote: post #62

Its 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…

It will be stuck in legal hell due to conflicts of interests. Trains already exist, and they need to work - but maintenance/repair companies cannot legally modify software of them due to copyrights. It's a catch22 situation. I honestly hope that company will be fined to the oblivion, and for criminal charges for that, but i doubt it will happen.

Supposedly tho the maintenance company would want to sue to at least dispute their contractual penalties?

> A day of train downtime in the workshop costs over 1000 USD in contractual penalties, and there are several trains stuck, so the tension level in the SPS is rising.

Also LSR, because evidently they were interested in holding a tender before and so likely don't want to be forced by Newag into overpriced maintenance contracts?

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

#169

Post by lostlogin »

hulitu wrote: post #150
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an individual did this, they'd go to prison.

It's funny how, in the western world, as a company, you can commit crimes and take a pat on the wrist, but, as an individual, you get to jail for the same crimes.

It’s simpler than that. A rich company or individual can often avoid jail. A poor company can just fold. It’s the poor individuals who suffer.

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

#170

Post by read_if_gay_ »

hulitu wrote: post #150
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an individual did this, they'd go to prison.

It's funny how, in the western world, as a company, you can commit crimes and take a pat on the wrist, but, as an individual, you get to jail for the same crimes.

rules for thee but not for me is not a western invention
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