Side project gone wrong? Taiwan student brings country’s rail network to a standstill
The disruption at the train station, initially thought to be an insider job, turned out to be the work of a 23-year-old radio equipment enthusiast.
A student in Taiwan was arrested for bringing the country’s trains to a standstill after he interfered with the high-speed rail network.
According to Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR), on April 5th, three trains were disrupted for 48 minutes.
The trains were stopped due to a General Alarm (GA) signal, which triggers the emergency braking system.
The investigation revealed that the disruption was caused by someone who managed to copy the high-speed rail’s radio signal.
The student, identified only by his surname Lin, was arrested and later released on a NT$100,000 ($3,183) bail.
It’s believed that Lin triggered the GA signal by essentially cloning the THSR signal and releasing it from his location, leading the authorities to believe it originated at the station.
The man connected a radio to his computer through a software-defined radio (SDR) filter, which caught THSR’s radio signal.
The student then arranged his radio to transmit the same signal and triggered the GA signal, stopping the trains.
It was initially thought that the hour-long delay was caused by an employee, reports Newtalk.
After the control center checked the internal communication equipment and confirmed that nothing was missing, the operator called the police the next day.
Officials believed that an employee may have caused the issue because they were given equipment with a built-in system that can automatically trigger this alarm and notify train drivers to initiate an emergency stop.
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Further investigation revealed that on April 5th at 11:23 p.m., the operations control center detected a GA signal from a Tetra mobile phone at Taichung Station, triggering the emergency response mechanism and causing three trains to stop.
Considering this to be a transportation safety violation, the investigation continued, leading to the arrest of a 23-year-old student, Lin, on April 28th.
The police raided the person’s home and workplace, retrieving seven radio devices, a laptop, two smartphones, and an SDR filter, according to The Register.
It’s not clear what Lin’s motives were behind the hack.
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