Earlier this week, I wrote about the remarkably cool story of three Polish hackers successfully messing with “the system”, as per request of their employer. They huffed and they puffed and they put a bunch of green numbers onto black terminal screens or whatever it is these people do to make stuff work. Full disclosure, you readers at home should know that I imagine these three in orange-tinted sunglasses, JNCO jeans and frosted tips. It’s vital to the story that we’re on the same page.
Anyway, train manufacturer Newag installed fun little software that renders their trains inoperable when serviced by an independent party, allegedly. The hackers, Dragon Sector, discovered this because the company that won the repair bid for the trains was, in fact, a well-respected independent party repair company. And when they tried to repair the trains, software locks appeared. The hackers were called in, discovered by the repair company by means of Google, and managed to bypass the anti-repair “parts pairing” software. The trains worked again, people were mad at Newag, and the hackers went their merry way.
Then, Newag denied that they installed this software, blamed it on hackers and/or slander from the competition, and threatened to sue Dragon Sector. The trains really weren’t working, so much so that the lack of trains was affecting service. How would this qualify as slander? Why sue Dragon Sector after successfully making the trains run? Seems curious, also, as to why some trains had code in ’em to lock up if they were at the competition’s repair workshops.
Dragon Sector believes the threats are idle, but that Newag is using litigation as a public intimidation tactic to scare off future independent repair attempts.
We’ll see where this goes and if it gets adapted into a Based on a True Story 90s-revival movie or not.