Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#31

Post by DanielleMolloy » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

Downdetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#32

Post by okanat » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

lyu07282 wrote: post #10

Happened before at a smaller scale, crazy high redundancies in GSM-R mean this is likely sabotage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be incompetence at this point.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#33

Post by gpvos » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #22

mmoll wrote: post #4

If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.

Probably someone forgot to renew the TLS certificate.

You may not be far off. Word is that it's a failed software update.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#34

Post by sleepybrett » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

okanat wrote: post #32

lyu07282 wrote: post #10

Happened before at a smaller scale, crazy high redundancies in GSM-R mean this is likely sabotage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be incompetence at this point.

vibe coding the rail software.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#35

Post by gpvos » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #13

Any HNer blocked in a DB train who can share with us the experience?

The same as usual I suppose: stopped at a station in a tiny village, without any information. Train staff will provide water, but that's about it.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#36

Post by usernametaken29 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

Honestly can’t tell the difference between this and a regular day r/dbsucks

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#37

Post by Kwpolska » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #21

ed_balls wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened in Poland and it was confirmed that Russians did it.

Do you have a link? Was it similar to what we’re seeing now (nationwide, radio related)?

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/29/polish-railways-fall-victim-...

tl;dr: Trains can be stopped by a transmitting a simple, documented tone sequence over analog radio.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#38

Post by fhdkweig » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #15

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651552

and submitted by the same user sva_

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sva_

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#39

Post by mfiro » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

It doesn’t surprise me at all. Deutsche Bahn got so bad in the recent years that Switzerland started turning some German trains around at Basel (border) to protect its own timetable from DB delays.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#40

Post by gpvos » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

The fallback for GSM-R is the normal GSM network, but according to informed guesses I've read, the handsets still need to authenticate using their GSM-R credentials (it's just normal GSM roaming), and that's failing too.