2 Polish Men Arrested for Radio Hack That Disrupted Trains \ stacker news ~tech

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2 Polish Men Arrested for Radio Hack That Disrupted Trains www.wired.com/story/poland-train-radio-attack-security-roundup

5459 sats \ 9 comments \ @mo 3 Sep 2023 tech

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51 sats \ 0 replies \ @02db2213a7 3 Sep 2023

For those who don't know, every train in Poland is equipped with an automated breaking system that can be triggered over the radio. It's an, let's say "area-wide" system i.e. if you broadcast a radiostop signal it will stop all trains around you as far as your radio broadcast is heard. There is no selectivity - you don't stop a specific train, you stop all of them, it's like shouting "everybody on the ground". Also, the signal is not encrypted, the specification for it is public knowledge, and it is extremely cheap and easy to do it yourself - you can pretty much record the signal on your mobile phone - it's just 3 different tones, and later play it while holding transmit button on your cheap $20 baofeng. Because of that, there are around 600 cases of unauthorized use of radiostop in Poland every year! Imagine what it does to train schedules.

I have no idea how things like thise work in other countries, as far as I know this is not a universal solution and it looks like something that was specifically invented for Polish railroads that did not have a signalling system that would be able to properly detect and warn about two trains on the same track. I guess that other countries just have more advanced signalling than Poland... correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW, this system started to be implemented in 1987. It was probably fine at that time but nowadays anyone can buy a cheap radio, trigger it and run. The whole thing suddenly got media coverage because this time someone not only transmitted radiostop signal but also broadcasted Russian anthem and Putin's speech on a frequency used by Polish railroads (BTW they also use analog and unencrypted modes so similarly to radiostop feature, anyone can listen, transmit and jam it). There is an EU-wide railroad radio telecommunication system being implented right now (GSM-R). The problem is it has already been like 15 years since they started building it in Poland and it is still not finished, 3 years behind the schedule.

If you want to know more this Polish article has a pretty detailed info on radiostop.

19 sats \ 4 replies \ @SpaceHodler 3 Sep 2023

It's sick that emitting radio waves is punishable by law. If your system is vulnerable to that, it's your problem. Secure it better.

It's not them who stopped the trains. It's their system that did, by picking up a signal it shouldn't have picked up.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @02db2213a7 3 Sep 2023

It's sick that emitting radio waves is punishable by law.

I guess you don't like having a reliable mobile phone service and undisturbed wifi at home.

If your system is vulnerable to that, it's your problem. Secure it better.

The Polish radiostop system is completely unsecured, so it is rather bad example to have this discussion. But in general, when it comes to radio, it is unfortunately not as simple as "secure it better". Sure, you can use spread spectrum, CDMA and whatever else is there when it comes to radio, cryptography and information theory techniques but all of this goes down the drain if you just use strong enough jammer emitting carrier on top of your desired signal.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @wacher 3 Sep 2023

Most countries have radio wave regulation. If you don't believe it, you can try to transmit radio signals in the restricted frequency band.