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They have not been trained for this

ccc.de

31–40 of 160 posts

Re: They have not been trained for this

#31

> If more than the € 30,000 required to date is donated, if the legal costs are lower or if court costs are repaid, all payments received in excess will be used for the statutory purposes of the Chaos Computer Club e.V.. Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation. That is one sure way to make people not donate to the cause. I want to support the people, but I don't want my m…

That’s a fair point and I had to re-read that sentence multiple times to understand what they are saying. They should indeed say how much money towards this cause has been received.

Re: They have not been trained for this

#32
post #4

I just donated 133,7€ and will gladly do it again if further legal costs arise. Please consider also making a generous donation and post about it in this thread. What Newag is doing here is absolutely vile. They want to charge 20.000€ per train to “reactivate” them after they have been serviced at third party workshops. We must not let them win and set a precedent. I highly encourage everyone to watch the previous pr…

I couldn't figure out how to donate from their website. Where did you donate to?

The payment information is a bit obfuscated, being only a parenthesized sequence of letters and numbers in the OP.

IBAN: DE41 2001 0020 0599 0902 01

BIC: PBNKDEFFXXX

Purpose: Lokomotive

Payee: CCC eV

Re: They have not been trained for this

#33
post #6
post #3

Previous discussion, when it was first discovered - I am surprised there wasn't more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38893116

There was much, much more discussion here, e.g: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38567687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38628635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788360 & more

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Manufacturer's Repair DRM Killed Train's Power, Broke Compressor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38893116 - Jan 2024 (2 comments)

Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788360 - Dec 2023 (51 comments)

Polish DRMed trains stop as predicted due to date-based logic-bomb - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38729035 - Dec 2023 (103 comments)

Trains were designed to break down after third-party repairs, hackers find - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38638865 - Dec 2023 (233 comments)

Polish Hackers that repaired DRM trains threatened by train company - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38628635 - Dec 2023 (142 comments)

Polish train maker denies claims its software bricked competitor rolling stock - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570654 - Dec 2023 (2 comments)

Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38567687 - Dec 2023 (293 comments)

Polish trains lock up when serviced in third-party workshops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530885 - Dec 2023 (360 comments)

Re: They have not been trained for this

#35

> If more than the € 30,000 required to date is donated, if the legal costs are lower or if court costs are repaid, all payments received in excess will be used for the statutory purposes of the Chaos Computer Club e.V.. Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation. That is one sure way to make people not donate to the cause. I want to support the people, but I don't want my m…

I’m assuming they have to say this from a legal perspective. In reality what they are saying is “we don’t know how much the legal fees will come to, could be less, could be more. However, once we have proper accounting, if there is money left over this will support CCC”

I’m not familiar with German governance for quasi not for profits, but I suspect the idea that funds are conditional for one specific purpose probably breaches governance, and returning funds to donors if certain conditions are/are not met could be problematic from a tax point of view. I know this would be the case in other European jurisdictions with which I am more familiar.

And here (from another HN link I just browsed) is other work CCC is doing, his time exposing a major security flaw in VW Audi Group security policies: https://cyberinsider.com/vw-suffers-major-breach-exposing-lo...

Re: They have not been trained for this

#36

> If more than the € 30,000 required to date is donated, if the legal costs are lower or if court costs are repaid, all payments received in excess will be used for the statutory purposes of the Chaos Computer Club e.V.. Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation. That is one sure way to make people not donate to the cause. I want to support the people, but I don't want my m…

The "Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation" part is a bad translation - this one is related to the German tax code.

To put it short: there are two different kinds of NPOs, first "regular" e.V. and then those e.V. that fulfill exclusively "aims for the common good" ("gemeinnützige Zwecke", the full list is in §52 AO [1]) - they carry a special benefit: donations can be deducted from your income for tax purposes.

The CCC is a non-profit organization, but since it (among other things) engages in taking political stances while at the same time not being a political party, it is not seen as a "gemeinnützig" organization - a fate that hit quite a few organizations in the last years [2] or is looming over their head [3].

[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ao_1977/__52.html

[2] https://www.campact.de/ueber-campact/der-verein/

[3] https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/politik/brandbrie...

Re: They have not been trained for this

#37
post #26
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 20k euros, would it not just be cheaper to hire some software people to jailbreak them? If companies that did this got jailbroken and blacklisted by the government, pretty much nobody would try this bullshit.

This isn't a software issue. This is a hackers-found-out-they-were-cheating-and-deactivated-their-train-DRM-and-now-these-hackers-are-getting-sued-issue. And getting sued by a train manifacturer is typically a asymmetrical battle for a private person. Consider watching the original talk (very entertaining and insightful, probably one of the best hacking related videos I watched in 2024), and if you like them toss the…

Rather than Cheating, don't you mean tortuous interference, followed by vexatious litigation?

When you intentionally design systems with purpose to delay, but overall sabotage, you show malice and you defraud the purchaser (after-the-fact), you also interfere with their business with third-parties, and impose coercive costs that have never been acceptable.

Coercion is generally not accepted by any civilized society that still follow its original founding principles, and coercion and corruption tend to go hand-in-hand.

Re: They have not been trained for this

#38

Looks like train manufacturers are taking a page out of the playbooks of many other companies today. The practice of manufacturers remotely disabling products after the time of purchase (for whatever reason) is becoming a scourge in many other product areas. The device's manufacturer should have no say about how a product is used once money is handed over in exchange for it. This really has to stop. Regulatory agenci…

Copyright is the root of the problem. More regulation could be a solution, sure, but is it really what we want?

If businesses are unable to regulate themselves, it must be done by law.

If copyright is the root of the problem, it may be time to remove that protection; or at least revert it so it is more in-line with patent law expiration.

No more author's life + 75. Lets try 15-20 once again, and no derivative protection, unless significantly different, receive protection.

Re: They have not been trained for this

#39

Looks like train manufacturers are taking a page out of the playbooks of many other companies today. The practice of manufacturers remotely disabling products after the time of purchase (for whatever reason) is becoming a scourge in many other product areas. The device's manufacturer should have no say about how a product is used once money is handed over in exchange for it. This really has to stop. Regulatory agenci…

Copyright is the root of the problem. More regulation could be a solution, sure, but is it really what we want?

You say this as if regulation for companies is a bad thing. Your entire existence is governed by regulations. Why should theirs not be?

Re: They have not been trained for this

#40

What happened to the old moral rule of "if you explain to your mom what you are doing and she is dismayed, you are doing things wrong"? Because what Newag is doing very clearly violates it.

Presumably that rule isn’t profitable to follow, and so the prime directive (maximize money in any legal or quasi legal way possible) takes precedence.

"to have a fiscal obligation (to your shareholders)" or something like that.
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