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Danish authorities in rush to close security loophole in Chinese electric buses
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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I wonder how this procurement was done, and who was responsible. Obviously, they never really checked the buses for security issues, or they where wrongly informed. How much will this investigation and updates cost, and would with hindsight, a different choice have been better and cheaper? If so, someone in procurement has been swayed, bought-off or was very misguided.
Online updates and remote diagnostics are usually an advertised feature and might even have been a selling argument as it appears to save costs in maintenance... until the Polish vendor turns off their trains because the operator dared to try to repair them themselves (yes that is not a "Chinese" problem).
about the polish case.
"Digging into the code revealed a software trap that would disable trains if they were anywhere near a repair facility that wasnβt run by the manufacturer, Newag. But Newag used a pretty inaccurate way to determine when the trains were in a rival repair shop, which led to some unexpected consequences."
I don't think this is what the problem with the buses are about. Ofcourse, on the fly update and remote features are probably more advanced. But if a third party (country) has 100% control, that means you don't have any.
No, this is not a 'Chinese' problem, but as a European I would rather have this problem with a European supplier than with a Chinese supplier for having control over the trains on the continent (or my car, or any technology).
I don't see how that makes a big difference. As the Polish example clearly shows, the laws right now are inadequate to deal with this and it took 3rd party hackers to reverse-engineer it after the company extorted significant amounts of money from the operator to re-enable the trains. And the icing on the cake is that now these hackers are in court, not the company.
And from an IT security perspective, it doesn't matter much to an attacker if the remote operated backdoor to shut down these busses is put there by a Chinese or European company (which would likely be using Chinese tech for that anyways).
It does matter, one major reason being that the European supplier operates under European jurisdictions and is easier to be held accountable.
Wherever that's the case, it must apparently be changed, one major reason being national security (the same reason why China is blocking European and other non-Chinese vendors in its domestic markets, btw).
[Edit typo.]
Accountable based on what laws? The real issue is that these things are perfectly legal regardless of who does it and that there is also almost no way to hold a supplier accountable for software security breaches (besides the fact that it is too late then anyways).
On the laws we have in European democracies that can be changed and adapted as needed (unlike in China, where this can't be done).
Ok so you agree that there is a need to make laws here in Europe about it and subject any supplier to them regardless of where their HQ is located? No need to answer that π
In principle I'd agree, but I have a nitpick: The laws must say that those that built infrastructure must be European countries with their HQ in Europe (not foreign-owned subsidiaries with European HQ).
That would be likely incompatible with WTO agreements and usually leads to local quasi monopolists charging absurd prices to government run service providers. And it wouldn't solve the likely issue of European companies buying the needed software and hardware from abroad anyway.
Do you have anything that fosters your statements?
That aside, China has been doing exactly that for decades, and this practice has intensified in recent years and even months.
Europe isn't China. It would be pointless to turn Europe into a quasi-China to prevent Chinese influence on Europe. Just like it is pointless to create European tech giants as a counter to US American ones.
What does that mean? And what has it to do with the linked report and what I said? This makes no sense.
China has a bunch of government aligned quasi-monopolists that try to expand into the European market. What you are suggesting is basically the same model, just with European ones, which is at most marginally better and will likely be much worse (I am old enough to remember when this was still a common model in western Europe, and it sucked big time).
The way it was done in this case was by ITT offers.
The company Movia, which is owned by the public municipalities and regions, put out a request for busses, including the requirements.
Once the request is out there, they usually do have to accept the cheapest offer that fulfills the requirements, unless there are special situations.
So, the requirements probably didn't account for this remote controlled thing. Responsibility should by placed at the board of the company.
It would be interesting to read the original request. The terms are usually quite strict, which can also be a problem, for instance if nobody can fulfill them or if the requirements are too specific so only one company can make an offer etc.
Maybe they're more lax in the company than if it had been a direct purchase from the municipality. It's quite unusual to see any Chinese suppliers for this sort of thing, because they don't pay their employees enough. It's standard terms in all public purchases that suppliers must have employment terms on level with local Danish union workers in the same sectors.
Just another reminder of why it's not a good idea to privatize public infrastructure..
Probably, something like this. But if there was a procurement interview with a Q&A it should've been discussed, imo. I wonder if the tech people got a say.
Oh they were warned from the defence department a few years ago. It's been an ongoing process since 2019. Other politicians also made an inquiry about how much it would cost to choose European suppliers in July this year, which showed that equivalent busses from Europe would cost up to 36 million dkk more and that European companies couldn't actually deliver. At least we know what the savings were, so the question is just what the fix will cost..
I wouldn't be surprised if the current news is more about the upcoming election than anything. The city busses aren't that critical in Copenhagen. They have have trains, trams and metros too and everything is in bicycle distance, so shutting down the busses would be a minor inconvenience to most people. It's not really a serious threat. Also, there really isn't a threat. It's only a potential in worst case scenario fan fiction.