Railroad Association Says TSA's Hacking Memo Was Wrong

McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."

Re:Fearmongering

[longacre]

TSA is already allowed to handle ALL modes of transport. TSA screens passengers at some Amtrak stations. The NYPD subcontracts TSA to perform random screening at subway stations (it's cheaper than having cops search bags). TSA also recently started set up some checkpoints along interstates.

Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care

[characterZer0]

health care != health insurance

Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care

[Dcnjoe60]

health care != health insurance

True, but in the United States, without health insurance, you cannot get adequate health care.

Signal outage, maybe.

[Animats]

There was one event a few years ago where some attack on a network resulted in a signal outage. That was because the long-haul links to wayside signal controllers went over an IP network.

But those aren't safety related. The safety logic is all local, in wayside boxes. That's where the train detection to signal control logic is. The long-haul connections are for dispatching - which train goes where, setting up routes, etc. Both the dispatching and safety information have to agree to produce a green light.

An outage of the links to the dispatcher turns signals red and stops trains. Such outages happen occasionally, and they're a huge headache, but not a safety issue. As a backup, trains can be given train orders by voice radio, but they're limited by slow-speed operation in that mode.

Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care

[ATMAvatar]

Reality seems to contradict you [commonwealthfund.org]. The US healthcare system is neither cheap (most expensive on the planet [kff.org]) nor efficient/good (usually towards the bottom of the list when ranking 1st world countries [nytimes.com]). In contrast, many of the cheapest and best systems for healthcare are either national healthcare systems (e.g., Canada and UK) or hybridized systems (e.g., the Netherlands).