this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.

After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.

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[–] Viking_Hippie 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Before looking it up, how much do you wanna bet that those NEWAG bastards are an American company? Put me down for 20 bucks.

Edit: turns out it's not, it's from Poland. There's no doubt that they got the idea for those despicable practices from American companies, though.

Also, this was fucking WILD:

a Polish hacker had developed a dongle that was being used by American repair professionals to bypass DRM on ventilators needed to keep COVID-19 patients alive

This is your society on underregulated capitalism AKA regulatory capture 🤬