Teen Hacks Tram Network With TV Remote

For those who pooh pooh security threats or believe they're all a result of lazy programmers or devious marketers here's a story worth noting.

In the classic security hack scenario a teenage geek with too much time on his hands reverse engineered the infrared protocol used to control tram track changes in Poland. He modified a TV Remote to send the appropriate signals and then treated the tram system as his own personal train set.

Security holes arise because of unimagined scenarios usually involving incredibly knowledgeable people with way too much spare time, new technologies becoming cheaply and widely available or very clever solutions to problems previously believed to be practically intractable.

Basically in response to my Dad's complaints about Windows updates (Quote: If they don't get it right the first time, then bad luck to them!), I'd like to point out that the people involved here were not programmers. Engineers left the infrared communication system wide open and failed to foresee this mischievous teen geek.

If that's not enough for you then think that virtually every car security system is cracked shortly after its release and professional thieves are able to enter almost any car within seconds. The reason this isn't a bigger problem for owners is (a) because the auto manufacturer community isn't as open as the software industry, and doesn't feel the obligation to notify owners of their insecurity or provide improvements, and (b) because stealing a car is still very hard due to the difficulty of selling it on, whereas stealing data (or causing other problems) anonymously is relatively easy and isn't always done for profit.

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