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Good job by the hacker on the train. The more people get used to the idea that their smartphone won't always work when they want it, the more they won't exclusi

Good job by the hacker on the train. The more people get used to the idea that their smartphone won't always work when they want it, the more they won't exclusively rely on it when there is a more significant risk. It's a one-man public service campaign.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
> It's a one-man public service campaign. But it also makes them liable; messing with other people's tech like this can be construed as attempted hacking. What they were doing was NOT "white-hat hacking", that's the author who reproduced the attack in his own home on his own device.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  Yes - this is probably "Obstruction Of Telephone Or Telegraph Service" in most states.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Fairly grey-hat I would think; the fact that they were doing this at a personal risk to themselves makes me appreciate it more.
badcppdev 3y ago
Well I'm glad you're certain that none of the passengers on the train were using their phone for critical patient care or handling a time sensitive family issue.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  The more reason to educate people on that front. Don't rely on your single piece of tech in your pocket to work all the time. Society ought to reacquire a bit of resilience on that front. Need to do critical patient care while commuting? Surely you will have made sure to bring a dumb phone with you as backup, if you are really that critical a resource (after all, your battery might be dead, someone might have stolen your fancy Iphone, etc.). Time sensitive family issue? What if you turned your phone off to read a book? Are you the asshole now? The train driver might have been stopped at a red signal in the Schipholtunnel; not much of a chance of getting a phone signal there. Is he now endangering people by depriving them of their umbilical uplink? What if the time sensitive family issue happened while you had your phone turned off for some intimate private time with your partner? How will you ever forgive yourself? The key takeaway here is to understand that there is no such thing as being available all the time. So don't expect it, and don't feel guilty about not providing it. There are all plenty more of those convoluted minimal chance scenarios you can come up with, but these hold true for anything people around you do.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    It’s amazing what sort of weird opinions people will contort themselves into to make their antisocial behavior “okay.” Got robbed and murdered? And you only had a deadbolt on your door? Surely you couldn’t be such an idiot as to not have a dual layer steel security door, could you? Got in a car accident because someone pulled out in front of you? And you were going the speed limit?! What a buffoon. You’re insane to be traveling above 20mph on any roadway, because someone could pull out in front of you at any moment and if you’re smart like me, and not a total doofus, you’re always on your toes. Got food poisoning at a restaurant? Well if you were smart you’d have asked to see the expiration dates on all their ingredients and observed the kitchen’s methods VERY closely. Make sure you also visit each supplier to observe their hygiene practices, and of course each party who touches each product along the supply chain. Anything short of that is outright negligence on your part. I’d rather we don’t degrade ourselves into a low trust society due to some abstract desire for “resilience” and instead we just put people in jail to deter people from harming others without their permission.
    - blagie 3y ago
      I think that's a false analogy. I don't have a clear sense on the ethics here, but the basic point is that we should be resilient to crises and broad cyberattacks. Cell towers _will_ sometimes go down, and rare events, such as nation-wide cyberattacks, _will_ eventually happen. Imagine if [adversary] spends time finding a zero-day in iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, and MacOS, and releases a worm which bricks every computer it gets on (e.g. overwrites every firmware with something maximally malicious). That's within the scope of capability of many world governments. What happens? Do people in hospitals die? Does out infrastructure collapse? Or do things keep ticking on, somehow? Tools like Chaos Monkey intentionally introduce more errors under normal operating circumstances in order to make systems more robust in extreme ones. This is a real-world analogy. For something like this on a train, it's a question of value systems. I can't bring myself to _have_ a value system which makes this okay for me to do something similar, but I can see rational value systems which would allow that (e.g. hedonistic utilitarianism). It's the trolly problem. All the examples you gave, in contrast, are just victim-blaming. There is no greater good. By my value system, though, what I would like to see are similar tests done planfully and intentionally. In the abstract, if a federal government took down the internet and cell phone networks for eight hours, or we had planned power blackouts, or similar, I'd be fully supportive. That would require organizations to build in the right types of resiliency. I understand that's fully impossible in the kinds of political systems we have. But in the right political system, I'd like to have a government which works to make us resilient to those kinds of extreme events.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

> It's a one-man public service campaign. But it also makes them liable; messing with other people's tech like this can be construed as attempted hacking. What they were doing was NOT "white-hat hacking", that's the author who reproduced the attack in his own home on his own device.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
Yes - this is probably "Obstruction Of Telephone Or Telegraph Service" in most states.
Freak_NL 3y ago
Fairly grey-hat I would think; the fact that they were doing this at a personal risk to themselves makes me appreciate it more.

badcppdev 3y ago

Well I'm glad you're certain that none of the passengers on the train were using their phone for critical patient care or handling a time sensitive family issue.

Freak_NL 3y ago
The more reason to educate people on that front. Don't rely on your single piece of tech in your pocket to work all the time. Society ought to reacquire a bit of resilience on that front. Need to do critical patient care while commuting? Surely you will have made sure to bring a dumb phone with you as backup, if you are really that critical a resource (after all, your battery might be dead, someone might have stolen your fancy Iphone, etc.). Time sensitive family issue? What if you turned your phone off to read a book? Are you the asshole now? The train driver might have been stopped at a red signal in the Schipholtunnel; not much of a chance of getting a phone signal there. Is he now endangering people by depriving them of their umbilical uplink? What if the time sensitive family issue happened while you had your phone turned off for some intimate private time with your partner? How will you ever forgive yourself? The key takeaway here is to understand that there is no such thing as being available all the time. So don't expect it, and don't feel guilty about not providing it. There are all plenty more of those convoluted minimal chance scenarios you can come up with, but these hold true for anything people around you do.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  It’s amazing what sort of weird opinions people will contort themselves into to make their antisocial behavior “okay.” Got robbed and murdered? And you only had a deadbolt on your door? Surely you couldn’t be such an idiot as to not have a dual layer steel security door, could you? Got in a car accident because someone pulled out in front of you? And you were going the speed limit?! What a buffoon. You’re insane to be traveling above 20mph on any roadway, because someone could pull out in front of you at any moment and if you’re smart like me, and not a total doofus, you’re always on your toes. Got food poisoning at a restaurant? Well if you were smart you’d have asked to see the expiration dates on all their ingredients and observed the kitchen’s methods VERY closely. Make sure you also visit each supplier to observe their hygiene practices, and of course each party who touches each product along the supply chain. Anything short of that is outright negligence on your part. I’d rather we don’t degrade ourselves into a low trust society due to some abstract desire for “resilience” and instead we just put people in jail to deter people from harming others without their permission.
  - blagie 3y ago
    I think that's a false analogy. I don't have a clear sense on the ethics here, but the basic point is that we should be resilient to crises and broad cyberattacks. Cell towers _will_ sometimes go down, and rare events, such as nation-wide cyberattacks, _will_ eventually happen. Imagine if [adversary] spends time finding a zero-day in iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, and MacOS, and releases a worm which bricks every computer it gets on (e.g. overwrites every firmware with something maximally malicious). That's within the scope of capability of many world governments. What happens? Do people in hospitals die? Does out infrastructure collapse? Or do things keep ticking on, somehow? Tools like Chaos Monkey intentionally introduce more errors under normal operating circumstances in order to make systems more robust in extreme ones. This is a real-world analogy. For something like this on a train, it's a question of value systems. I can't bring myself to _have_ a value system which makes this okay for me to do something similar, but I can see rational value systems which would allow that (e.g. hedonistic utilitarianism). It's the trolly problem. All the examples you gave, in contrast, are just victim-blaming. There is no greater good. By my value system, though, what I would like to see are similar tests done planfully and intentionally. In the abstract, if a federal government took down the internet and cell phone networks for eight hours, or we had planned power blackouts, or similar, I'd be fully supportive. That would require organizations to build in the right types of resiliency. I understand that's fully impossible in the kinds of political systems we have. But in the right political system, I'd like to have a government which works to make us resilient to those kinds of extreme events.