FredTA - Slashdot User

Submission + - What's Frying The Electrical Systems on BART Trains? (ieee.org) 4

Submitted by Tekla Perry on Thursday March 17, 2016 @04:10PM

Tekla Perry writes: Earlier this month, BART engineers shut down a substation in hopes that the closure would quiet the power surges that were frying the electrical propulsion equipment on BART cars--a peak of 40 in just one day in February. The shutdown seemed to solve the problem, but BART officials weren't sure they'd really found the answer. Yesterday, the power surges popped up again, on an entirely different section of tracks, damaging 50 cars before BART closed off that section, rerouting passengers onto buses. Track inspections yesterday revealed nothing, and BART reports that it has reached out to experts around the country and asked them to fly in and help solve the mystery. Do you have a theory?

Submission + - Hotel Experience With Android Lightswitches (dreamwidth.org)

Submitted by jones_supa on Saturday March 12, 2016 @06:49AM

jones_supa writes: The hotel in which Matthew Garrett was staying at, had decided that light switches are unfashionable and replaced them with a series of Android tablets. In his tour to the system, one was quickly met with a glitch message "UK_bathroom isn't responding". Anyway, two of the tablets had convenient-looking Ethernet cables plugged into the wall, so MacGyver began hacking. He managed to borrow a couple of USB Ethernet adapters, set up a transparent bridge and then stuck his laptop between the tablet and the wall. Tcpdump showed traffic, and Wireshark revealed that it was Modbus over TCP. Modbus is a pretty trivial protocol, and does not implement authentication. The Pymodbus tool could be used to control lights, turn the TV on/off and even close and open the curtains. Then he noticed something. His room number was 714. The IP address he was communicating with was 172.16.207.14. They wouldn't, would they? Indeed, he could access the control systems on every floor and query other rooms to figure out whether the lights were on or not, which strongly implies that he could control them as well.

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