this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Right to Repair
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Whether it be electronics, automobiles or medical equipment, the manufacturers should not be able to horde “oem” parts, render your stuff useless if you repair it with aftermarket parts, or hide schematics of their products.
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~~The mere fact that the manufacturer had a remote kill switch is the safety issue that should have a big spotlight.~~(edit: this is not the case - see the reply below) What if a malicious hacker decides to trigger that kill switch while the train is loaded with people and at a sensitive moment (e.g. on bridge/cliff with a huge drop).
If the kill switch were in place for dealing with hi-jackers, perhaps fair enough. But having it for the purpose of business protectionism is an entirely reckless safety risk.
There’s an overlooked failure here: why doesn’t the Polish transport authority have a clause in their procurement contracts that bans trains with remote-control kill switches that are not under user control? And why wasn’t the code reviewed to catch that in advance? The hackers say they did not alter the code, which somewhat implies that the source code might have been available for inspection.
In the talk they gave yesterday night, Dragon Sector hackers clarified that they are not aware of any remote control available to the manufacturer.
The locks were implemented inside the code both when the trains were first serviced to railway operators by the manufacturer, and any time the manufacturer was given direct on-hand access.
See here to watch their speech: https://feddit.it/post/4391905
Thanks for the link. Indeed you are correct. The lock only triggers when it’s stopped and it’s hard-coded and not remote. Apparently the only comms involved was the train signalling to the manufacturer that the lock was triggered.