Thursday's meeting of the parliamentary infrastructure committee regarding problems with Newag's Impuls trains was interrupted; is to be resumed after inviting representatives of the services, including the Internal Security Agency and the Central Anticorruption Bureau. The presence of members of the hacker group and the lack of Newag representatives aroused discussions.
At the end of last year, hackers from the Dragon Sector group, acting on behalf of a train servicing company competing with Newag, revealed that Newag from Nowy Sącz had intentionally introduced software into Impuls trains that blocked trains while they were running. The authorities of the Nowy Sącz company deny these claims and, before their disclosure, notified law enforcement authorities about the suspicion of unauthorized modification of the trains' software. Additionally, Newag filed a lawsuit against hackers from the Dragon Sector group to the District Court in Warsaw.
Request to stop work
The topic of Thursday's meeting of the Parliamentary Infrastructure Committee was information from the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Office of Rail Transport and the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection on problems with Impuls trains. The deputy chairman of the committee requested the interruption of the meeting Andrzej Adamczyk (PIS); requested to invite representatives of the following services to the committee meeting: ABW, CBA and perhaps military counterintelligence, which will be decided by the Minister of Interior and Administration. He also requested that representatives of the Dragon Sector group be prevented from speaking during the committee's deliberations.
– I have the impression that (…) members of the infrastructure committee are being used to play competitive, business matters. (…) I request that the relevant services be brought to the attention of this problem the relevant services should assess this problem and present it practically. I also request that the so-called social side, i.e. representatives of the Dragon Sector group, be prevented from speaking, so that they can testify everything they have to say for the hearing minutes of the CBA, ABW and other services, said Adamczyk.
– I do not know what the goal is and I cannot understand that today representatives of this group of hackers commonly called “ethical hackers” (…) would have to present any conclusions today – he added.
Adamczyk also requested that the Minister of Internal Affairs be asked to “urgently investigate everything that is happening around this problem.” He also requested more information about the problems of other manufacturers of railway vehicles, including: about Pesa in Bydgoszcz.
“Important message”
Committee member Marek Sowa from KO agreed to Adamczyk's request. He pointed to the lack of consistency because representatives of Newag were not invited to Thursday's commission, but members of the Dragon Sector group and their representative were invited.
– I want the chairman to say, at whose invitation Mr. Zbigniew Krüger (the group's representative – ed.) is attending today's committee, because in my opinion this is quite important news. As I understand it, the lawyer represents an entity that is in a dispute with Newag and I do not know whether the appropriate place for disputes between business entities is a committee meeting, Sowa pointed out, adding that the court proceedings are unfinished.
Only Paulina Matysiak, an MP from the Razem party, opposed the request to interrupt the meeting.
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