Polish Indie Repair Shops Had To Hire Hackers To Tackle Pointless, Train-Crippling DRM

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

One reason that “right to repair” reform has such broad, bipartisan public support is because there’s really no aspect of your daily life that isn’t touched by it. The effort to monopolize repair isn’t just the territory of Apple or game console makers like Sony and Microsoft. The problem is present in everything from the agricultural and medical gear sectors, to transportation.

Everywhere you look you have companies attempting to drive independent repair shops out of business, in turn creating numerous headaches while they drive up costs for consumers. Then, whenever absolutely anybody proposes doing anything about their attempt to monopolize repair, these companies will complain critics are putting consumer security, privacy, or safety at risk. It’s clockwork.

The latest case in point: 404 Media noticed that over in Poland, one regional rail company and a train manufacturer named NEWAG has taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize — and drive up the costs of repair.

The intentionally broken tractors disrupted rail travel, so independent technicians took to hiring a white hat hacking group dubbed Dragon Sector to bypass the DRM and get the trains running again:

“These trains were locking up for arbitrary reasons after being serviced at third-party workshops. The manufacturer argued that this was because of malpractice by these workshops, and that they should be serviced by them instead of third parties,” Bazański, who goes by the handle q3k, posted on Mastodon. “After a certain update by NEWAG, the cabin controls would also display scary messages about copyright violations if the human machine interface detected a subset of conditions that should’ve engaged the lock but the train was still operational. The trains also had a GSM telemetry unit that was broadcasting lock conditions, and in some cases appeared to be able to lock the train remotely.”

Again, manufacturers aren’t doing this to genuinely protect hardware or customer security and safety (though executives may have convinced themselves of such). They’re doing it because they’re obsessed with control, and because they want a monopoly on repair.

And, as always, the folks trying to bypass the unnecessary, self-serving restrictions are framed by industry as radical rabble-rousers and a threat to public safety:

“Hacking IT systems is a violation of many legal provisions and a threat to railway traffic safety,” NEWAG added. “We do not know who interfered with the train control software, using what methods and what qualifications. We also notified the Office of Rail Transport about this so that it could decide to withdraw from service the sets subjected to the activities of unknown hackers.”

The problem for companies following this path is that the widespread, bipartisan support for right to repair reform is only growing. The more companies try to fight back, the bigger the opposition gets. That’s a major reason why companies like Apple and Microsoft (at least publicly), have begun softening their rhetoric and started focusing on controlling the contours of potential legislative reforms.

Filed Under: consumer rights, drm, freedom to tinker, independent repair shops, poland, trains
Companies: newag