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unless we have the entirety of the context for this code and the 20,000 pages of service manuals, i do not accept at face value that it's this simple



Any kind of GPS coordinates, especially those of competitor facilities in the firmware of a train is proof positive that something really bad is going on.

Context and manuals are just so much smoke and fail to obscure the facts.


Considering that the situation this was named after had _very_ specific timing, state and sensor values coded in a defeat device, I'd say that having the mapped the gps coordinates of your competitors im the firmware of your product is pretty damning.

Nevermind the poorly executed "if day => 21, month => 11, year => 2021", which was conveniently setting a failure which wasn't actually present.

It'a probably not that simple, but it's not that complicated either. If you make something engineered to fail without there being a failure present, that's clear malice.

Imagine buying a car, you own it until the warranty runs out and the the manufacturer's workshop moves (say there was a fire/flood/sinkhole/industrial disaster, and they had to) and the car would refuse to move since it's not being serviced at the official location anymore.


There’s literally a hundred reasons why code like that could exist. My point is there is probably another hundred thousand lines of code and we have no idea how the few lines we see are being used.




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