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14-Year-Old Turns Tram System Into Personal Train Set
F-3582 writes "By modifying a TV remote a 14-year-old boy from Lodz, Poland, managed to gain control over the junctions of the tracks. According to The Register the boy had 'trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. [...] Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit.' Four trams derailed in the process injuring a number of passengers. The boy is now looking at 'charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.'"
I know some kids who are extremely bright, curious, and for lack of a better description, "like to experiment". Any one of these I think could have done the same thing, and with completely innocent (though mischievous) intent. For playing with such big toys in such a fashion there should be repercussions. But the kids I know who also could have done something like this would be much more on track with thinking about how they're moving switches than about what moving those switches implies.
However, I'm led to a different train of thought. What other systems are out there created in the same context, i.e., with little thought to external interference? I'm betting there are a "few". I wonder that in the process of designing something like this if we must pay more attention to the possibility of outsiders tinkering. I hope France's TGV has a bit more built in checks and balances than this. I hope the new Boeing 787 has more security built in than this.
I actually think (and hope) this kid's imagination and curiosity somehow gets channeled rather than squashed. He actually sounds like he could be a contributor. Of course, he's at least grounded for the next month.
It should be the enginners and their bosses that should be the ones facing criminal charges.
I have $20 that says at least one TV crime-drama-whatever show will have a plot where a bad guy tries to plot some train crash by messing with a TV remote, or better yet, video game controller.
This kid does deserve to get in trouble, though, big-time. You don't go around derailing trams, that's not cool.
I like basketball!!1!
Good thing he wasn't in the United States, where he'd be charged with terrorism, waterboarded, sodomized with a broom handle and thrown in Guantanamo Bay forever. The Department of Homeland Security would then increase the Train Flight Security Awareness Threat to Indigo, and the attorney general would trumpet the great work that the US Government is doing to prevent further Terrorist Train Derailments.
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
Does it really take special security training for engineers to realize that controlling train junctions with TV remote controls (or close enough) might be a bad idea? Where's the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag when you need it?
"driver attempting to steer his vehicle to the right was involuntarily taken to the left."
;-)
Uh. Sounds about right...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Here is the article in the Telegraph.
I particularly enjoyed the phrase:
As they then list two incedents since 1999 and the Boeing 787 concern.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
Forget the tv remote.
Imagine what chaos aspiring electronics buffs will be able to create with Wii controllers!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Maybe he should play more video games?
In some law systems, he'd probably be labeled a terrorist, charged with attempted murder (if he even gets a criminal trial) and spend 10 years in jail. Let's hope Poland is more civilized, I'd guess humiliation from the trial plus quite a lot of hours of community service will frighten him enough to never cross the line again. Then again, his parents will probably be ruined as they'll have to pay the damages.
Fleur de Sel
Sounds like this kid was not adequately challenged by his school. At least that's what the story leads me to believe. If I was the judge I would let him off on the condition that he goes to a school where his curiosity will be encouraged but given enough direction so he doesn't get into more trouble.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Yeah, Poland is so backwards. In the US, we don't need teenagers to derail our trains.
Local authorities released this video capturing the culprits in their crime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiAk5vqvn3A
IANATE (I Am Not A Tram Expert), but if it was on RAILS, how or why would you STEER it?
It's fun to hear about these kinds of events if no one got hurt. But, at th same time it's rather frightening the though of someone with an intellect like that with a lot of time on their hands and no productive outlet to use it.
Think what could be accomplished if people like this where given access to what they needed and had the same motivation when it came to curing cancer.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Why? Yes security should have been implimented but why should one group have to defend themselves against another group? What does the answer say to our failures as human being even after millions of years of evolution? Do we need another millions of years to get the utopia we claim to desire and will we survive in the mean time?
Why is it that facility operators, be it trains, power plants, oil refineries, or anything have pathetic security, and when something does happen, they blame it totally on the perp who likely never had to confront even a single lock, much less a guard?
Makes me wonder if countries should have a special regulatory team whose job it is to attempt break ins on a regular basis to various areas, and levy fines to organizations failing compliance. Only problem is areas where people shoot to kill... telling a tiger team from a genuine trespasser/burglar/criminal before pulling the trigger.
"a special juvenile court of endangering public safety"
sounds about right...
According to Wikipedia Lodz's; tram is called the Cityrunner by Bombardier. A picture of a tram is on wikimedia commons.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
In the US many places with newer traffic signal circuitry (at least on the west coast) have something called Signal Pre-Emption.
:).
This allows emergency vehicles to by-pass traffic lights by turning them green. It uses an IR transponder on vehicles, and an IR receiver on lights. When a certain frequency (pulse) is sent out from the vehicle and picked up by the receiver, the light turns green.
Before you try to build a device to do that I want to say 2 things:
1. Devices are available on the 'black market', and
2. Every time this signal gets sent, it gets recorded in a log. There have been cases of people getting caught using these and the fines are hefty.
The same system is used, called "Signal Priority" can be used by buses to hold the light green or trigger an early green in various circumstances. (Basically this involves sending out a frequency that's different from Emergency vehicles.
I bet that Lodz uses a similar technology for its trams, but maybe they thought nobody could figure it out, so they simply went with security via obscurity (or whatever the term for it is).
Czech Republic has a single system (as in same system type, not same transponders) in the entire country for its trams and trolley buses and uses something similar to your car key remote.
If anyone manages to figure out how the signal pre-emption works, please post details online
-Palal
I, for one, would like to welcome our new TV remote modifying overlords.
Well, yes and no. Just give a bit of serious thought to the issue... I'm at work, have to AC.
It sounds as though the system worked of infrared pulse encoding, and that is why he could use a modified television remote. Imagine you are the one designing this (probably in the 1970's or 1980's...) It is generally desirable to keep things simple to ensure they actually *work* -- that is, having a rolling code that may be out of sync while having a signalling train hurtle toward the junction at 80 mph is not desirable -- you want a simple system that the train can activate if needed.
Anybody who has worked with security (my job) knows that the more layers you add, the harder (network) testing is, and the more ways something can go VERY wrong for a legitimate user.
If the train couldn't switch the junction box because it didn't have the right "password," you would also criticize the engineers.
I defend the train design -- this should be treated as sabotage, and is more along the continuum of putting a penny on the tracks or mechanically interfering with a junction box, things that are also dangerous, illegal, and difficult to defend entirely against.
Poor child. Its just a cry for help! Don't you people understand? I mean, if I were the judge, I'd show leniency and send him to genius school where he could be challenged and nurture his growth! I'd give him flowers and positive reinforcement that he is a good person, and its OK! Everyone is a winner! Even if he killed someone, I'd say, "Well, then they should have never been on that tram anyway...my little snookem wookems. Now go run and play!" Fucking retards...
"OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"
Usually, tram switches are not controlled by a central switchbox (like real railways), but by the driver or a computer in the vehicle, using radio or infrared control.
train tracks have switches/points in order to take one route or another.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
...heinously vulnerable systems are the ones who should get locked up in jail.
Yeah, Poland is so backwards.
I know. in fact, they call RPN just "notation" !
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Tram line 21 runs east to west.
Tram line 19 runs east to west on 21's tracks, then turns onto a north-south track heading south.
Driver of 19 sets his left-straight-right turn lever to broadcast "right".
Kid overrides with a left, lead car turns left.
Kid stops overriding, the junction again sees the signal on the tram to switch to turn right, and the second car goes right, causing a derailment.
In the US, most remote junction switches have a fail-safe that prevents the tracks from switching if there's a car over the junction, thus preventing driver error or malicious external elements from causing a derailment by making the train go in 2 directions at once. Apparently no such fail-safe is present on the systems in Lodz (pronounced 'woodj' in Polish).
Trams switches are usually controlled via some kind of remote command from the tram, not centrally. So, the tram driver can - at least at switches - indeed steer the tram.
And my guess is the conductor normally controls these switches with remote... not the kid outside of the train with a hacked TV remote.
The whole safety department of that tram line should be fired. A system hackable via a TV remote and unencyrpted signals subject to relay attacks should not be deployed ever. They should be sacked for having allowed it. Same goes for the "traffic light" systems here in the US with the same flaws. Course I didn't RTFA so maybe he even cracked the encryption. In which case only sack the designer of the encryption.
That 14 year old obviously has no life, plays video games and is probably fat due to the fact he does not go out and eat McDonald's.
So then one HAS to ask; why have the switches at all? It would be a lot safter if each tram route had it's own track. Not only that but centralized control over the space in between the trams would make it even safer. Not only that, it also makes stations easier. If one station serves two routes then the place to get on each route would be different from each other and hence one physical location at a station would always correspond to the same tram route. Just thinking out loud here. Isn't this how the Underground in London works?
That the kid had no other outlet.
That security was so lax
That the trains switch gear actually responded to a TV remote
At least he did not go after the EuroRail or other high speed train
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
This is a street tram switching system similar to the Elektroline system. It's not a full signalling system with interlocking. The tram driver is in control, and has an RF transmitter which can control switches. The current generation, the "TRAMVYS 6K", is an RF transmitter on 433.9 or 868.35 MHz. Normal range is very short, about 2M, with the transmitter down on the front truck of the tram and the receiver buried in the road. But it could probably be triggered by someone at the side of the street with a suitable transmitter. This system is interlocked so that the switch can't change position underneath a tram.
That's current technology. Older systems are much dumber. Some of this stuff is at the garage-door-opener level of RF devices. The Lodz tram system dates from 1898, so they have lots of legacy trackwork.
Simple really. Because we all want to be those people. But we can't be if the world holds us acountable for doing so.
And just think...he did this with a little recon work of the depots and a tv remote. Now imagine would someone else could do with financial backing, fanatical devotion, and a little bit of high explosives. The little guy should be punished...but I think the train system itself should face some consequences. I'm all for ease of use...but I think a little extra security could be used when a 14 year old with a tv remote and a bit of time can cause this much chaos.
I have a hunch they decided there is no money in building highly insecure hardware systems and moved on to write highly insecure software systems. No prizes for guessing their current employer.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Let's all do a reality check.
1. Engineering was likely given a number of constraints that can not be ignored. For example, build it in 6 months at a final BOM cost of $Y.
2. Picture a small hill with the railroad purchasing agents on the top. On one side is the manufacturer of switch, on the other, the boy. Sh!t rolls downhill onto both parties.
It's a pity the boy has to be made an example of.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
From an average citizen's perspective I have got to say: Shame on you, this is dangerous and worse thing could have happened
From a nerd's perspective I have got to say: That is friggin awesome!!1!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If I read you right; this kid's pathological behavior narrowly avoided mass death and should, in a sane society, earn him many years of intense therapy in an institution whose security is better designed that the train control system whose breach initiated this post.
damaged by dogma
IANATE, but I play one at work. You don't STEER a train/tram, but someone does control the alignment of the switches that govern the route. In large train networks, it's usually the central dispatcher.
It sounds as if the switches were controlled by some sort of wireless communication between the tram engineer's cab and the switch machine. The derailment was probably caused when the switch moved before the train cleared the switch. The front cars followed one path while the back car followed another. Eventually something gave way and the last car derailed.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
Four trams derailed in the process injuring a number of passengers.
;)
I know he hacked this together out of a remote control, but that's a horribly inefficient process he created - surely it's possible to injure the passengers without derailing the trams!
Most power switches in the US have OS sensing, which disables the switch from moving while a zone near and on the switch is occupied. This would have prevented that facing-point switch (points are pointed at you) in Lodz from operating and splitting the train. OS originally meant "Off Sheet" in the days of telegraphers, now means "On Station", at least according to the signal people I am acquainted with.
Between "Die Hard 3" and "Unbreakable," you just KNOW Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson had to be involved in this somehow.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Poland is using IR to remote control their tram switches? That's just asking for trouble.
...and that's all there is to it.
If he had done this in the US he'd either have been shot to death or in Gitmo by now.
If only this could somehow be spun into a funny joke, but it is too close to the truth, unfortunately.
Tram switches (or turnouts) are not like railway switches which are controlled from a central point. A tram switch is controlled by the driver of the tram either by a electromagnetic contact between the rails or by radiowaves. All tram switches may also be operated manually.
... of how weak certain systems can be, by Max Cornelisse. Check any of his videos (except the one where they interview him) to be amazed. And you don't need to understand what he is saying... (I didn't).
Hell, we don't even need teenagers to crash our Monorails
BOING BOING! Boeing...?
Somewhat on/off topic...
Anyone recall how Boeing slammed Airbus? Now, turnabout can be a bitch, even from strange places. With all the news about non-secure data buses and such, Boeing is caught up in damage control. I wonder if this bodes well for Airbus. (Yeh, I heard that some of their planes had control issues such as defying pilot/co-pilot crash-recovery input...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Because trams in most Europe runs on tracks in the street together with other traffic.
The system works, it just need a little security adjustment.
Yeah, right, that's like saying all bus routes need to run on different roads.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
One of such example is CSI new york S04 E10 , where the guy stalking mac taylor, put a MP3 player with a program supposed to hi jack the control of a metro/subway traffic control. Supposedly the mp3 player HD overwrite the controller program and subvert it so that the power cannot be cut off and a subway ram into another at station 33 avenue (line 3). When I just saw that 5 minutes ago I was thinking totally irrealistic, especially the part where they visit a hacker web site and the title are "hack DVD 101" "hack SUBWAY 101". But thanks to slashdot I am put in my own place, and yes Dorothee, you can hack the subway. or at least some tramway. Now where is that yellow road to sane engineering again ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
14 year old Polish boy to head new department of electronic security for the Polish rail system.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
In California it could be life imprisonment without any possibility of parole or the death penalty if someone dies as a result of it.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_wreck
Now, I'm all for people driving the speed limit, maybe a little more. But legally, the speed limit is an upper limit, not a lower limit. And people who drive like the speed limit is just a guideline tend, in my experience, to be more prone to road rage than those who actually obey it.
Maybe you should consider a class in anger management. Or take a deep breath and put on some jazz music when you get in heavy traffic.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Sorry..someone had to! :-O
Ok, they run in the street with other traffic (another pet peeve of mine) but that has nothing to do with each line having it's own track.
A tram leaves Prague traveling at 47Kph. At what time does it arrive at its destination? A: Its scheduled time, unless it passes through Lodz, Poland in which case the answer is Never.
Uhm, no it's not. Buses lend themselves to sharing lanes with each other. However Buses should have bus stops which are designed in such a way that they do not impeed traffic when the Bus stops. That's another topic though. Trams, Trains and anything that runs on rails fall into another category of things that don't share space well. Instead of making straight routes that all use some of the same rail and then shoot off to different destinations the routes could be designed with transfers so that trams just run effeciently on that one long rail and then people jump on another train to get to the localized destination or they jump onto a loop route that just runs circles. Seriously people, look at the London Underground. I'm almost positive that is how they do it.
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
Some people just don't think about consequences....
They're called teenagers. That said someone needs to be accountable for this INCLUDING the idiots that designed it.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Actually, he was was in the second car of a two-car tram. He switched after the first car passed forcing the second car to go the other way.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
What you are failing to understand is the difference between an underground railway, which runs on it's own tracks in it's own tunnels, and a tram, which runs on street level tracks in the middle of the road. There simply isn't space for multiple parallel tracks, just as roads have intersections so do tram lines.
:)
Besides which, the tube certainly does have switches, just look at how many delays are based on their failures
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Yeah, Poland is so backwards. In the US, we don't need teenagers to derail our trains.
Because in the US, trains derail YOU!!
I am officially gone from
A Polish article, contrary to what is written in the one to which Slashdot links, mentions that:
According to the same article, Adam will be put for 3 months in a juvenile hall. After that period, psychologists will issue an opinion on him and his behaviour. It will affect the court's decision on the kid's future. I don't live in Lodz myself, so I cannot do anything more then just translating articles which appear in central newspapers and portals.
PS: Also, the city's name is not Lodz - see it on Wikipedia. Slashdot should really adopt Unicode.
Tram derailment on the switch
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HmjUyKejzzI/
That is correct, but if you do that you lose the flexibility of the trams.
Used to be, these systems responded to a particular frequency of strobe flashes, and people were selling cheater boxes all over Ebay.
Nowadays the systems have a "password". It's still a one-way hash, so theoretically one can capture the flashes from a fire truck going down the street. So a generic box you buy on EBay isn't much use. And assuming the authorities have programmed security codes into the devices.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Really.
A little known Aussie film - Malcolm (1986) -
tells the tale of someone who worked in trams
in the city of Melbourne, who built a tramlet
(small machine that moved along tram tracks),
which he reportedly drove around after hours,
ie, until he lost his job; then the real fun
begins, eg, after he rents a room in his home
to a recently released ex-con.
Malcolm is depicted as having Asbergers Syn-
drome (or something similar), as well as some
skills devising all kinds of machines - for
home & tram line - eventually, turning his
talents to crime, for the fun of it.
While details may have been changed to make
the film more marketable, the general story
of Malcolm, working with Melbourne trams re-
portedly has basis in fact.
As there are 2 films entitled "Malcolm" any-
one looking for this one needs to look for
the 1986 version.
Since Malcolm & his gang get away with the
crime, it's been recently said that this
Aussie classic wouldn't be deemed suitable
for broadcast on Aussie TV under today's
broadcast code.
I'm pretty sure the switches on the Tube are just for taking trains on and off of a line.
Second of all, I can't stand stupid trams sharing space with traffic. They don't ease traffic at all. They shouldn't exist. They don't do anything busses don't do. Light rail should be elevated either all the time or at intersections.
Lastly, I'm not talking about putting parallel lines next to each other. My idea is for people to get off the train and transfer to another to get to their more localized destination. These trains could be out and back routes, or loops.
Lodz, kurwa.
:(
BTW, I can't post most of the polish characters
PRT is a much more elegant solution to that problem.
You can see the picture of the crashed trams here http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/51,35134,4823174.html?i=0 At the moment, total 12 people were injured due to derail accidents caused by this boy, with first 'hack' happening somewhere back in December. At first, mechanical failure was suspected, but after the second accident police was informed. In addition to infrared device, boy also had stolen access keys, which allowed him to enter both trams and the tram-company warehouse. It turned out that he was actually on board of the trams he was derailing - in front of first cars, to be able to influence the switch with remote.
There are some protections against switching the rail while tram is on top of them, but they were implemented only in few areas of the city. Reason for not putting them everywhere is that neither city nor tram company is not feeling responsible - tracks are owned by city and only leased to tram company. City on the other hand says that company gets special discounts which should be spent for maintaining the tracks...
Currently the boy is in correction institute for young criminals and he will spend there 3 months. Depending on the further development of the case and his behavior during those 3 months, court will decide about his future. This boy already had some problems in the past and he had curator/warden(?) assigned to him. He was often missing school.
... engineers responsible for the systems' design have been transferred to the 787 avionics design department.
Have gnu, will travel.
for all the times the damn airliners opened and closed our garage door when they flew over the house.
What?
1. Wait for first set of wheels to pass over switch.
2. Activate switch (before last set of wheels have passed).
3. Observe different parts of the same train travel in 2 different directions.
4. ???
5. Jail time!
I lost my sig.
From the (rather high quality) Wikipedia article:
The full WP material on the tube is pretty decent and worth reading in full, if you're ever insomniac or something and feel like geeking out about huge mass transit systems (large scale civil engineering infrastructure being a pet geekism for me, I don't know about anyone else at slashdot...)
Anyway, I don't know anything at all about Lodz' trams, but as a fellow European city, I would imagine the explanation is ultimately much the same, namely: our cities are ancient, and tram and rail and metro services were built considerably later than the 700 years worth of other stuff, so there isn't room for fully dedicated physical tracks for every conceptual service "line".
And I'm saying your an idiot who doesn't know any better, but thinks they do. Keep on dreaming shit for brains.
How to Recognize a Good Programmer
I'm confused.
The kid knows the difference between right and wrong.
The kid knew there was a chance someone could possible get hurt.
The kid knew exactly what he was doing and the possible outcomes.
So the kid hacked into something, sorry, but what he did wasn't that spectacular from a tech perspective, but from the 'cat and mouse' game of security, he could have told someone what he was intending to do, instead of doing it.
How is what this kid did any different then from a terrorist attack? Because the kid was just experimenting? What is with the hacker/cracker/phreaker/etc mentality that no one will listen, so you must prove it.
--built a radio freq randomizer at 12 and played with remote control garages back in the late 80s.
What is interesting by looking at the map is how much is NOT shared. But alas I WAS wrong. I can't find any info on how they switch the trains to the right track though. Is it automated?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quld5950v6w
Alternate video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lSaYx6ttuE&feature=related
5 lies about Poland (try not to knock the spelling - check your own) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p67IVwRUilc&feature=related
Here's the kernel of truth underlying all those Polish jokes - most people can't seem to pull themselves up, so they choose someone superior to pull down to make themselves feel better.
Best luck to you.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
A teen crime shouldn't be thought of any different than that of a mentally retarded person; their mental limitations are heavily influential upon how you deal with the problem. It should be clear to somebody who deals with teens or has them that they are not smaller adults who are just ignorant, they are stupid in ways that make them fundamentally different than adults (for the most part, even then acting to the contrary not any different than primates mimicking behaviors...these being the smartest primates.)
Watch PBS frontline's show on the teenage brain for more background:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/view/
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The most important line from the article got into the summary: "Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit."
Unfortunately that's not limited to transport command and control systems.
Also note, that a decade ago, it wasn't very common to have a lot of traffic on the street in Poland outside of Warszawa.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Actually there weren't padlocks everywhere -- we don't have trams here any more, but I know there were a lot of switches around in the system that weren't protected by padlocks, or anything more special than the unlikeliness of the general public carrying crowbars with them from day to day. It wasn't that uncommon for many switches to be left completely open so the driver could jump out and change it if necessary. I'm sure there was the occasional accident from time to time thanks to the occasional idiot, but people here were actually trusted not to meddle with things like that. And for the most part they didn't.
I really don't see what the big deal is with this. A 14 year old kid was playing some games, caused some accidents, people got hurt (not seriously) because of his stupidity. You'd expect he's going to get into a lot of trouble for it, and it sounds like he is. Yes, you could start trying to put all kinds of security systems in place to prevent potential meddling by terrorists and idiots, but the reality is that it'll cost a lot of money that could be better spent on other things, and it'd be completely redundant in all but a few places. You can bet if this was something that happened there a lot, there probably would be better security on the points.
If someone's really intent on sabotaging a tram system, there are plenty of ways to do it besides simply overriding the switches. It can be done easily enough with a few rocks in strategic places, which would either cause derailments, or potential-injury-causing emergency stops -- and this is exactly what the kid caused according to the article. The only difference here is that he used a method that nobody thought would be as likely.
The best way to combat something like this isn't necessarily to put lots of draconian technical security in the system which people will only try to break or work around. It's far better to just try and educate people so they won't be as motivated to do this kind of thing in the first place, and be prepared for the occasional accident -- maybe with better safety features so there are less likely to be injuries during something like a derailment or an emergency stop.
Well on my train set, the switches were designed so that trains coming in from either branch would enter the switch in such a way that they'd push the bar in the switch as they came through. I've driven real trams where switches were designed in exactly this way, which seems to make a lot of sense. The only complication is that after the vehicle has passed through, the switch is left pointing into the branch that the vehicle just came from. (A common way of designing them would be to put a spring in the switch, to make sure it'd always direct traffic down the same line, but let traffic come back the other way from either line.
I don't know how the Polish switches worked -- the automatic ones that I'm used to could be controlled by the tram driver through moderating the amount of power being drawn from the overhead at a specific position shortly before reaching the switch. So as a driver, you'd be prepared to either accelerate or drift at that exact location. My guess is that the Polish switches were controlled by remote signals so the driver could use some kind of dedicated control in the tram that'd simply send the signal ahead to a receiver. If the kid's remote happened to send a signal to change the switch when the tram was half-way over it, it'd be easy to get a situation where the back section went in a different direction from the front section. This would explain the derailments quite nicely, as well as the emergency stops (for those drivers who realised quickly enough that something was wrong).
It was voodoo, the nanochips inserted in his molecular system and market-jesus who forced him to do it!
Beware of nickelodeon-capitalism-terrorismm!!!!!
save the kids!
Perhaps you've grown up in a culture of fearing your neighbours, but not everyone does. Perhaps in Lodz, it's a waste of time, money and energy to assume that the local population is conspiring to bring the system down? Are you going to lock up the operator of a random shopping mall because they didn't strip all weapons from shoppers prior to someone going on a shooting rampage? Personally I haven't grown up in a culture of fear, I prefer to trust people in general, and I've found that strategy to be mutually beneficial.
This is a local metropolitan tram system. Any damage that can be caused by manipulating switches on the tracks can already be caused in many other ways (such as leaving rocks on the tracks). People don't usually do it. If they do for some retarded reason, the damage tends to be limited. And I would blame him totally -- he's old enough to know that derailing trams is a bad thing to do.
If this kept happening over and over again, I'd maybe expect the authorities of Lodz to do something about the security of the system. Otherwise there are probably much better things on which they could be spending their time and effort.
I'm with AC. Just shut up, you don't know a damn thing about public transport. And regarding the London Tube, there is no fucking way every track is separate. Despite what another poster said, even most subways reuse tracks between different lines.
A picture showing the tram after this accident:
http://img.naszemiasto.pl/grafika2/nowy/cd/40_806895_1_d_1362.jpg
An article about that (in Polish):
http://lodz.naszemiasto.pl/wydarzenia/806895.html
and going 20mph over the speed limit, endangering everyone else due to the size of the vehicle...
.357 , POINT TO YOUR HEAD, AND PRESS THE TRIGGER. THE WORLD WILL BE A BETTER PLACE.
And you are the one who proudly displaying an CONFEDERATE flag and vote for RON PAUL.
And you are the one who holding the a fictional book called the "Holy Bible" and waiting for endtime to come so you go rapture and left everyone else dead.
I SUGGEST YOU PICKUP A
It's interesting times, when hacking technology is a game for kids too young to really know what consequences and social responsibility is about. Not their fault, it's just brain development.
When I was 12, a mate and I were fires in laneways behind houses and running away. This is in Australia, you'd think we'd be more fire-conscious. But it wasn't because we wanted to hurt anyone or burn anything down. We knew it was "naughty" (hence running away afterwards) but that doesn't translate into "wrong". Naughty = thrill FTW. Luckily nothing happened.
Never committed an actual crime in my life, highest respect for property and people. Kids are just kids, but the tech makes em more dangerous buggers nowadays. Lighting fires in laneways less deadly than derailing a train.
8) I hope this does not affect my Trainz Simulator futures....
Don't you think...? Or don't you?
I'm not sure if it was reported in English, but that's how it happened:
In Lodz there are no advanced systems that change the traffic lights. The system that got hacked was basicaly a device that allowed the tram to go left or right on a one way track (most tram tracks are one way).
So to derail a tram, that kid moved the track after the first car in a tram was pass the junction. This way he was able to send the first car in a tram left, and a second one right - a derailing.
Changing junctions when no tram was passing is not a problem - tram operator will just switch it to the direction he wants to go. The security flaw was that it was possible to switch a junction while a tram was on it.
You sir, have not only written the funniest thing I've read in a day, but have also have won the thread. I think we can all go home now.
Also, you owe me a new laptop.
More than mere navel gazing.
Breaking one traffic law, by speeding, doesn't bother you; but breaking another law, by passing to the right, does?
You want the police to ignore one traffic law, your speeding; but enforce another, the rules regarding the passing lane?
I don't think you care about the law at all. I think you're just a selfish prick and want the entire road to yourself, and everyone and everything in thw world to conform to your personal notion of what is proper.
Interesting vids, thanks for posting. I didn't know any of that stuff.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Give it a rest with the undergraduate sociology BS. This kid was an idiot who derailed trams just to amuse himself. He deserves prison no matter what his IQ. The fact you try and defend him with that verbal diarrhea probably says more about your mental state as a teenager than his.
from a local newspaper (in Polish):
http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/1,35136,4830800.html
In short:
Boy not only had the device for controlling the switches but also had set of keys, manual etc.
He admitted derailing eight trams in the past.
He had been previously noted for severe anti-social and criminal acts (vandalism, an attempt of stealing a car, an attempt of setting a fire, threatening his father).
There were two cases against him for these acts in a local juvenile court in progress.
The juvenile court has decided to put him in detention ("juvenile shelter") until the final decision is taken.
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As it has previously been noted, the tram network in Lodz is old, fairly large and was designed when nobody was concerned about such problems. Because of its bad condition some derailments were probably assigned to other causes.