You've probably heard some mention of the story of the Polish train that was set to disable itself if parked in a competing repair shop's yard. Well it turned out that the train, made by a company called NewAg, also had some logic bombs set to sneakily make systems appear broken if the train was parked anywhere for a set amount of time, artificially taking advantage of "ran when parked" uncertainty:
https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/
We shouldn't be surprised to see this sort of thing happen with production cars some day in jurisdictions without strong right-to-repair laws.
What programmer in their right mind would do that as part of there job and do it so poorly that they leave so many traces behind and get caught. Did they bring somebody unskilled in at the end of the project and have the logic added? This is 20 lbs of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag.
Mndsm
MegaDork
1/4/24 5:29 p.m.
And this is why I'm shopping old cars. DRM restricted vehicles? PASS.
wearymicrobe said:
What programmer in their right mind would do that as part of there job and do it so poorly that they leave so many traces behind and get caught. Did they bring somebody unskilled in at the end of the project and have the logic added? This is 20 lbs of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag.
You see did it poorly, I see had a conscience and left breadcrumbs.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
An exhaust port on the Deathstar.
Tom Suddard said:
NewAg has also threatened to sue the hackers and has claimed that fixing the trains constituted a copyright violation.
Wowwwwwwww
And people here are upset about automotive regulations. One of those being that the average mechanic have the ability (within reason) to repair cars.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
wearymicrobe said:
What programmer in their right mind would do that as part of there job and do it so poorly that they leave so many traces behind and get caught. Did they bring somebody unskilled in at the end of the project and have the logic added? This is 20 lbs of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag.
You see did it poorly, I see had a conscience and left breadcrumbs.
You give people a lot more credit then I would for doing illegal acts. I need to finish the paper on how they found it but if it is a single bit flip and tied to a date and gps and they have the source code somehow you have to be monumentally stupid to do something like this.
Mndsm
MegaDork
1/4/24 9:50 p.m.
wearymicrobe said:
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
wearymicrobe said:
What programmer in their right mind would do that as part of there job and do it so poorly that they leave so many traces behind and get caught. Did they bring somebody unskilled in at the end of the project and have the logic added? This is 20 lbs of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag.
You see did it poorly, I see had a conscience and left breadcrumbs.
You give people a lot more credit then I would for doing illegal acts. I need to finish the paper on how they found it but if it is a single bit flip and tied to a date and gps and they have the source code somehow you have to be monumentally stupid to do something like this.
I see the possibility of a company being shady enough to do a thing like this being cheap enough to go ahead and pay a programmer as little as possible, to the point where both scenarios could exist- even if the did it on purpose reason exists solely on "berkeley that guy" business. I've known people that petty.
Appleseed said:
In reply to Mndsm :
Did they look like this?
They spared no expense...
I posted about this back in December, and kind of forgot about it. It's interesting to see what details have come out so far.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
wearymicrobe said:
What programmer in their right mind would do that as part of there job and do it so poorly that they leave so many traces behind and get caught. Did they bring somebody unskilled in at the end of the project and have the logic added? This is 20 lbs of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag.
You see did it poorly, I see had a conscience and left breadcrumbs.
I see wasn't paid to do the extra work to hide what they'd done.
