This could actually invite retaliation from the EU for anti-competitive
behaviour. It's quite common for tram, bus and train operators to contract
out maintenance to companies other than the original manufacturer. Perhaps
in this case the operator was breaching an existing contract during
warranty period, for example?

This is Newag's sole tram product, for Krakow. Very similar to Melbourne E
class.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/126N-RY899%2C_Krak%C3%B3w%2C_2016-11-30.jpg

Tony P

On Thursday 7 December 2023 at 09:47:53 UTC+11 Matthew Geier wrote:

> It's not directly 'trams down under', but we buy equipment from

> manufactures who MAY indulge in this behavior.

>

>

> https://badcyber.com/dieselgate-but-for-trains-some-heavyweight-hardware-hacking/

>

> Basically NEWAG (Polish rolling stock manufacturer, I think they have

> trams/light rail products too), coded logic bombs into the train

> computers - if a train spent too much time at a 'competitors' workshop,

> the train computer disabled itself. And it was viral - the railway sent

> a train to tow one of the disabled trains out, only to have the rescue

> train disable itself when coupled to the broken one.

>

> The article is for techno geeks and translated from Polish, but

> basically the OEM maintenance contract on the new(ish) trains expired

> and another company won the contract. They took train in for it's

> regular programmed maintenance, did exactly what the manuals said, but

> the train would not power up afterwards. After several disabled trains

> and OEM claiming the maintenance provider just didn't do it properly,

> the railway hired some 'hackers' who 'de-compiled' the train computer code.

>

> What they found in that code should be illegal if it isn't already. It's

> even worse than VW cheating on emissions testing. These trains disabled

> them selves if they spent too much time in a competitors workshop and

> had calendar based 'failures', where it would report a subsystem failed

> on a certain date regardless of the actual subsystem operational status.

>

> I'm sure other manufactures do this crap too, NEWAG just got caught out.

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