Polish Teen Derails Tram After Hacking Train Network

A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents.

The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points, The Telegraph reports. Local police said the youngster trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. The teenager told police that he modified track setting for a prank.

"He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built
a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre
the trams and the tracks," said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz
police.

"He had converted the television control into a device capable of
controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a
school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around
and what signals to change.

"He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but
it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others
had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did
not think about the consequences of his actions," Micor added.

Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by
engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using
commodity electronics and a little native wit. The apparent ease with
which Lodz's tram network was hacked, even by these low standards, is
still a bit of an eye opener.