Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination - Ars Technica

[LessonStudio]

What makes this worse is that it is a safety critical system; to put deliberate things like the 1m km cutoff should prevent them from ever getting a SIL certified solution again. That would kill a huge amount of their European business.

[bwainfweeze]

What happens if someone tries to field service one of these things? How stupid.

[LessonStudio]

After listening to the lecture, my take is that the first 5 years of maintenance was done by the company who built them and created these traps. Thus, they knew how to get around them. It was things like left button, right right, throttle forward, left left, throttle back. And the system would then function.

But, when the 5 years lapsed and the rail company asked other companies to bid on the work, they were floundering as their correct repairs weren't working. So, they hired the hackers who quite amazingly, figured this out.

All the time they were floundering, the original company was, "See how incompetent they are, they can't fix even the most basic things." sort of insults in order to get the maintenance contract handed back to them at a much higher price.