That's what happens when you ignore critical infrastructure for three decades.
Of course, if the government were to correct the mistakes of the past, it would get worse for another decade. The necessary repairs would cause a lot more delays, and voters would then say "Were giving them so much extra money, and it gets worse? Unacceptable!". So I fear we'll continue to have these problems forever.
>> It’s believed the perpetrators of the attack were supporters of the Russian war effort, as the stop signals were also joined by broadcasts of the Russian national anthem and a speech from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attacks have some significance to the invasion of Ukraine, as Poland has been a hub for crucial weapons deliveries supporting the defence of Ukraine.
Yes, yes, it's a code of honour not to use the someone' else national anthem, sure. Especially if you need to bolster the population support for some ongoing cause.
My 100 bucks are on an expired certificate in the trust chain. the same kind of issue that took down almost all Verifone payment terminals in Germany in 2022.
It's russian hybrid warfare against Germany. Since invasion of Ukraine there have been numerous cable cuttings on train tracks, several train derailments, some fires.
It has become so bad that police helicopters are regularly patrolling train routes at night to spot sabotage as early as possible. People complain about the flight noise at night which was not there before.
So as a person working in cyber security, I'd put this into the sabotage bucket.
I’m sitting in an ICE in Munich that was supposed to leave a few minutes before I saw this story on HN. First the conductor announced a 30 minute delay because the radio wasn’t working, and then they bumped it to 2 hours. They didn’t say it was a systemwide problem.
The fallback for GSM-R is the normal GSM network, but according to informed guesses I've read, the handsets still need to authenticate using their GSM-R credentials (it's just normal GSM roaming), and that's failing too.
It's either that or starlink, some railroads in Germany go through areas without any mobile network signal. Think about how crazy that is in 2026 when everything expects everyone to be online 24/7/365.
If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.
That's what happens when you ignore critical infrastructure for three decades.
Of course, if the government were to correct the mistakes of the past, it would get worse for another decade. The necessary repairs would cause a lot more delays, and voters would then say "Were giving them so much extra money, and it gets worse? Unacceptable!". So I fear we'll continue to have these problems forever.
> when you ignore critical infrastructure for three decades
To be fair, Deutsche Bahn is currently spending “€107bn between 2025 and 2029” on infrastructure upgrades [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/db75e347-b13b-4753-8130-6301bb55c...
They need to spend at least 3x that and they need to bring redundant workforce to fix Germany. It is completely broken now.
For DB, this type of outage is referred to as "Tuesday".
Same thing happened in Poland and it was confirmed that Russians did it.
Do you have a link?
Was it similar to what we’re seeing now (nationwide, radio related)?
https://hackaday.com/2023/08/29/polish-railways-fall-victim-...
tl;dr: Trains can be stopped by a transmitting a simple, documented tone sequence over analog radio.
Ah, good, not the same thing then.
Honestly, DB are perfectly capable of clusterf*cking their GSM-R without help from Russia.
> it was confirmed that Russians did it.
>> It’s believed the perpetrators of the attack were supporters of the Russian war effort, as the stop signals were also joined by broadcasts of the Russian national anthem and a speech from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attacks have some significance to the invasion of Ukraine, as Poland has been a hub for crucial weapons deliveries supporting the defence of Ukraine.
Yes, yes, it's a code of honour not to use the someone' else national anthem, sure. Especially if you need to bolster the population support for some ongoing cause.
These are effective targets for hybrid warfare for that very reason, plausible deniability
Probably someone forgot to renew the TLS certificate.
My 100 bucks are on an expired certificate in the trust chain. the same kind of issue that took down almost all Verifone payment terminals in Germany in 2022.
You may not be far off. Word is that it's a failed software update.
You mean neglect?
Thirty years of it.
Neglect is basically unscheduled maintenance.
Neglect is basically scheduled unmaintenance.
It's russian hybrid warfare against Germany. Since invasion of Ukraine there have been numerous cable cuttings on train tracks, several train derailments, some fires.
It has become so bad that police helicopters are regularly patrolling train routes at night to spot sabotage as early as possible. People complain about the flight noise at night which was not there before.
So as a person working in cyber security, I'd put this into the sabotage bucket.
It is the only English source I could find.
Apparently, all train services in Germany are currently disrupted.
German source:
https://www1.wdr.de/nrw/verkehr/zugverkehr-in-nrw-komplett-e...
Not much is known currently, except that the German railway has issues with radio communication - which I found curious enough to post.
Can passengers tell, I thought German trains were always disrupted!
It is telling that I thought “that’s why all trains were late this afternoon” before I realized that the issue occurred only minutes ago.
Downdetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com
Same problem happened two years ago. You'd think that would be enough time to figure out a failsafe routine
Seems like the failsafe also failed today.
It's a GSM-R issue. See Tagesschau (German): https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/deutsche-bahn-...
>This special mobile communication standard is designed to make communication fail-safe
Mmm, nope.
It did fail safe though?
Interference led to the network stopping, not trains just racing towards each other due to bogus line authorities. That is, by definition, fail-safe
If nothing works, eveything is safe, no?
Any HNer blocked in a DB train who can share with us the experience?
I’m sitting in an ICE in Munich that was supposed to leave a few minutes before I saw this story on HN. First the conductor announced a 30 minute delay because the radio wasn’t working, and then they bumped it to 2 hours. They didn’t say it was a systemwide problem.
I would get out and look for a hotel before all of them get sold out. Probably tomorrow too.
The same as usual I suppose: stopped at a station in a tiny village, without any information. Train staff will provide water, but that's about it.
The fallback for GSM-R is the normal GSM network, but according to informed guesses I've read, the handsets still need to authenticate using their GSM-R credentials (it's just normal GSM roaming), and that's failing too.
Interesting, I just took an OBB train today from Zurich to Amsterdam, which passes through a lot of Germany.
Its return train is currently stuck at Oberhausen.
AP source: https://apnews.com/article/germany-trains-halted-communicati...
@dang please update if you see this
And merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651613
It's either that or starlink, some railroads in Germany go through areas without any mobile network signal. Think about how crazy that is in 2026 when everything expects everyone to be online 24/7/365.
They aren’t using starlink for safety critical comms
The railroads have their own mobile network, GSM-R, it's in the article...
It's my understanding that most rail/rail collisions are the result of poor communication.