Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PCs Pilfered, Paralyzing Populace

Posted by michael on from the doh! dept.

Heywood Yabuzof writes "According to this Wired story, thieves in Chile caused traffic to grind to a halt when they decided to steal the computers (15 PCs and 2 servers) that control the traffic lights in Santiago. Funny how everyone worries so much about preventing "evil hackers" from breaking in to systems remotely and causing chaos, and then some burglars just go ahead and steal the critical computers to produce the same (unintended?) results."

1 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. This is a problem all over the world by jedrek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sitting behind our screens, we sometimes forget that the entire network is actually a physical entity. We remind ourselves of it when a backhoe rips through our ISP's OC3, or when we're out of cable and can't connect our network card to our router or modem.

    Well, at least I do.

    Anyway, here in Poland there's a problem with people stealing cable. Not cable-tv, but telecommunication cables. Whole neighborhoods here in Warsaw have been cut off from telephony because of stolen inter-exchange cable. Railroad lights have been known to fail because of stolen equipment (this happens way too often). It's twice as bad in Russia, trust me.

    Actually, at times, it seems like everything that isn't screwed or welded down in this country (this region) will get stolen. Ah... sucks pretty bad.