7 ms·
If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.
by mmoll 3mo ago
If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.
- Bluebirt 3mo agoYou mean neglect?
- thih9 3mo agoNeglect is basically unscheduled maintenance.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3mo agoNeglect is basically scheduled unmaintenance.
- gpvos 3mo agoThirty years of it.
- ed_balls 3mo agoSame thing happened in Poland and it was confirmed that Russians did it.
- thih9 3mo agoDo you have a link? Was it similar to what we’re seeing now (nationwide, radio related)?
- Kwpolska 3mo agohttps://hackaday.com/2023/08/29/polish-railways-fall-victim-to-cheap-radio-attack/ https://hackaday.com/2023/08/29/polish-railways-fall-victim-... tl;dr: Trains can be stopped by a transmitting a simple, documented tone sequence over analog radio.
- eqvinox 3mo agoAh, good, not the same thing then. Honestly, DB are perfectly capable of clusterf*cking their GSM-R without help from Russia.
- justsomehnguy 3mo ago> it was confirmed that Russians did it. >> It’s believed the perpetrators of the attack were supporters of the Russian war effort, as the stop signals were also joined by broadcasts of the Russian national anthem and a speech from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attacks have some significance to the invasion of Ukraine, as Poland has been a hub for crucial weapons deliveries supporting the defence of Ukraine. Yes, yes, it's a code of honour not to use the someone' else national anthem, sure. Especially if you need to bolster the population support for some ongoing cause.
- jasonvorhe 3mo agoWas waiting for someone to bring this up. X is already full of similar nonsense. As if DB didn't have a track record of utterly broken infrastructure. For decades. I guess by this logic we could also claim that "there Germans caused the power outage in Berlin last winter" because the perpetrators were likely German political activists.
- dfltr 3mo agoFor DB, this type of outage is referred to as "Tuesday".
- hobofan 3mo agoProbably someone forgot to renew the TLS certificate.
- gruselhaus 3mo agoMy 100 bucks are on an expired certificate in the trust chain. the same kind of issue that took down almost all Verifone payment terminals in Germany in 2022.
- gpvos 3mo agoYou may not be far off. Word is that it's a failed software update.
- fnordian_slip 3mo agoThat's what happens when you ignore critical infrastructure for three decades. Of course, if the government were to correct the mistakes of the past, it would get worse for another decade. The necessary repairs would cause a lot more delays, and voters would then say "Were giving them so much extra money, and it gets worse? Unacceptable!". So I fear we'll continue to have these problems forever.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> when you ignore critical infrastructure for three decades To be fair, Deutsche Bahn is currently spending “€107bn between 2025 and 2029” on infrastructure upgrades [1]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/db75e347-b13b-4753-8130-6301bb55c040?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/db75e347-b13b-4753-8130-6301bb55c...
- wolfi1 3mo agothat could have been a lot cheaper of they would have spent in the past (their spending seems to have been very low)
- okanat 3mo agoThey need to spend at least 3x that and they need to bring redundant workforce to fix Germany. It is completely broken now.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> They need to spend at least 3x that According to whom?
- okanat 3mo agoLook at how much Switzerland spends per capita vs Germany. €477 vs €115. And Swiss kept their infrastructure well unlike Germans. source: https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/infrastruktur/investitionen/ https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/infrastruktur/inve...
- bflesch 3mo ago[flagged]
- fhars 3mo agoIt's not, it was a scheduled software update.
- jasonvorhe 3mo agoYou'd be wrong and you're spreading "dangerous misinformation".
- polyomino 3mo agoThese are effective targets for hybrid warfare for that very reason, plausible deniability
- eqvinox 3mo agoFor context, in case people are less familiar with German politics: DB is in a misbegotten state of privatization, started in the 90ies. The government spun it out into a private company but still owns 100% of it. They were trying to pump it up so they could sell it for good money. They did that by skimping on everything including maintenance, to try and make the numbers look good. Except they never got to whatever magic numbers they wanted before the maintenance debt came rearing its ugly head and now everything is royally screwed. And because it's a private company, there's a whole bunch of barriers limiting how much they can even subsidize the thing at this point. Not sure if this is better or worse than the UK's Network Rail story, but at the end of the day the only thing that will solve this is if they re-nationalize the tracks & infrastructure. What kind of an idiot thought including that in the privatization is a good idea is beyond me. It's not like you can build a 2nd railway network in order to get free market & competition. (For comparison, imagine privatizing the entire road network, village street to Autobahn.)
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> Not sure if this is better or worse than the UK's Network Rail story “About 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s intercity trains arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time in the year to January 2025, compared with 78 per cent of British long-distance trains, according to the FT analysis. Any interaction with the German rail network is also one of the biggest factors affecting the punctuality of long-distance rail travel in Central Europe” [1]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/d3b6e6b5-eddb-4230-b866-932d284cef9c?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/d3b6e6b5-eddb-4230-b866-932d284ce...
- eqvinox 3mo agoThe UK's railway network was only privately owned from 1994 to 2002 though, everything after that is already under the umbrella of re-nationalisation, which didn't go super well either (my knowledge about that is rather vague). Not sure how useful 2025 numbers are in this context. [ed.: to be clear - AFAIK they are in the same state currently, private company but 100% government owned. But there's a huge distinction in that the UK has made the decision to move back in the direction of nationalisation. In Germany, some people still pretend this is somehow fine and just needs to get cleaned up before the privatization can continue.]
- wolfi1 3mo agoand/or incompetence
- warumdarum 3mo agoCould also be a russian firembomber gig worker getting brushed under mnt carpet of societal stability. Anything to keep this powderkeg of parallel societies going ..
- uxhacker 3mo agoWhat is surprising is that GSM-R is 2g. Does not 2g have many security issues?
- aaron695 3mo ago[dead]
- shmeeed 3mo agoGiven the current heat wave, it might be a case of "trains not running because it's too hot"? As opposed to, you know, "trains not running because it's too cold", e.g. because of icing on the overhead lines.
- rurban 3mo agoWell, it was a *planned* update of a central system component in their radio. That's why the restauration took only 8 hours. Their 90 min excuse is bonkers. Unplanned it would have taken much longer. Can confirm that their update planning process is abyssal. Half a year for the first simple reply. Comparable only to HP
- raverbashing 3mo agoSomeone needs to restart some Windows NT 4.0 machine in some cabinet somewhere