hackers

Wednesday, August 28th, marked the beginning of the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Polish train manufacturer Newag against train maintenance yard Serwis Pojazdow Szynowych and experts from the Dragon Sector group, who revealed weird software locks in Impuls-series trains. The company demands almost six million Polish złotys (about 1.4mln EUR) compensation. Surprisingly, it also admits that the hackers did not modify software in on-board controllers.

In late 2023 Onet and Zaufana Trzecia Strona wrote about Impuls multiple-unit trains that were rendered inoperable. I wrote about this for OKO.press in December that year. For years Newag-manufactured trains experienced suspicious breakdowns, becoming inoperable often after maintenance performed by third-party maintenance yards like Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych (SPS).

Polish version of this entry has originally been published by Oko Press.

Excessive use by the media of words “hacker”, “hacking”, “hack”, and the like, whenever a story concerns information security, online break-ins, leaks, and cyberattacks is problematic:

1. Makes it hard to inform the public accurately about causes of a given event, and thus makes it all but impossible to have an informed debate about it.
2. Demonizes a creative community of tinkerers, artists, IT researchers, and information security experts.

Uninformed public debate

The first problem is laid bare by the recent compromise of a private e-mail account belonging to Michał Dworczyk, Polish PM’s top aide.