Category: China
This city bought 300 Chinese electric buses — then found out China can turn them off at will
A city had a rude awakening when it tested its electric buses for security flaws.
Some cities have gone all-in on their dedication to renewable energy and electric public transportation, but discovering that a jurisdiction does not actually control its own public property likely was not part of the idea.
‘In theory, the bus could therefore be stopped or rendered unusable.’
This turned out to be exactly the case when Ruter — the public transportation authority for Oslo, Norway — decided to run tests on its new Chinese electric buses.
Approximately 300 e-buses from Chinese company Yutong made their way to Norway earlier this year, with outlet China Buses calling it a “core breakthrough” in Chinese brands’ global reach.
Yutong offers at least 15 different types of electric buses ranging from 60- to 120-passenger capacity.
As reported by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten on Tuesday, Ruter conducted secret testing on some of its electric buses over the summer. It decided to look into one bus from a European manufacturer, as well as another from Yutong, to address cybersecurity risks.
The test results were shocking.
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Photo by Li An/Xinhua via Getty Images
Investigators discovered that the Chinese-built buses could be controlled remotely from their homeland, unlike the European vehicles.
Ruter reported that the Chinese can access software updates, diagnostics, and battery systems remotely, and, “In theory, the bus could therefore be stopped or rendered unusable by the manufacturer.”
The details were described by Arild Tjomsland, who helped conduct the tests. Tjomsland is a special adviser at the University of South-Eastern Norway, according to Turkish website AA.
“The Chinese bus can be stopped, turned off, or receive updates that can destroy the technology that the bus needs to operate normally,” Tjomsland reportedly said. He additionally noted that while the buses could not be steered remotely, they could still be shut down and used as leverage by bad actors.
Pravda Norway described the situation as the Chinese government essentially being able to decommission the buses at any time.
Photo by Lyu You/Xinhua via Getty Images
Norway’s transport minister praised Ruter for completing the tests and said the government would initiate a risk assessment related to countries “with which Norway does not have security policy cooperation.”
Ruter’s CEO, Bernt Reitan Jenssen, said the company plans on working with authorities to strengthen the cybersecurity surrounding its public infrastructure.
“We need to involve all competent authorities that deal with cybersecurity, stand together, and draw on cutting-edge expertise,” Jenssen said.
As a temporary fix, Ruter revealed the buses can be disconnected from the internet by removing their SIM cards to assume “local control should the need arise.”
There was no word as to whether the SIM cards are upsized for buses.
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Judicial Watch: FBI Met with Twitter Officials Days Before 2022 Election to Discuss Twitter ‘Content Moderation Policies’
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received a heavily redacted email from the U.S. Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit which shows Biden-era FBI personnel discussing a “touch point meeting” with Twitter regarding reported meddling by China in the 2022 midterm election and the social media platform’s “potential […]
The post Judicial Watch: FBI Met with Twitter Officials Days Before 2022 Election to Discuss Twitter ‘Content Moderation Policies’ appeared first on Judicial Watch.
Reagan–Thatcher, Trump–Takaichi, and Cold War II
In Japan, she is known as the “iron lady,” a not-so-subtle comparison to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher — the staunch American…
Trump and Xi Make Progress But the Work Is Far From Over
Donald Trump just concluded the first Asia trip of his second term with one of the highest-stakes dealmaking sessions of his career. His meeting with Xi Jinping did not end in a fiery outburst or the grand bargain the Chinese desired and most Americans and their allies feared, but it was far from inconsequential. The incomplete and tentative agreement struck in Busan, South Korea, revealed the path each superpower is pursuing to dominate global affairs and why they remain at odds.
The post Trump and Xi Make Progress But the Work Is Far From Over appeared first on .
Brit Hume Identifies Big Concern Lower-Income Americans Have About Imported Chinese Goods
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A Potent Replacement for Fentanyl Is Emerging in the U.S. Experts Say China Is Behind It.
An even more potent replacement for fentanyl is emerging in the United States, and experts say China is behind its rise.
The post A Potent Replacement for Fentanyl Is Emerging in the U.S. Experts Say China Is Behind It. appeared first on .
Some Dare Call It Treason
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How China can use GPS against us — a disaster waiting to happen
China has developed multiple ways to avoid using a global positioning system — if it needs to — in the event it launches an attack on the West’s systems.
Using a combination of Cold War-era technology and advanced GPS methodology, China — in conjunction with other American adversaries — has insulated itself from attacks on its systems in order to achieve an operational edge for its most crucial technologies.
‘The United States and a lot of our Western allies are kind of uniquely vulnerable right now.’
GPS provides the required background for telecommunications networks, electric grids, banking systems, and also mass transport. In addition, it guides precision munitions and military equipment, while providing conventional navigation for the average person in their car or smartphone.
Aiden Buzzetti, president of the pro-America nonprofit Bull Moose Project, told Return in an exclusive interview that the United States is out in the open in terms of a potential GPS-related attack.
“We know that the Russians jam GPS … in the Baltics, the commercial flights in Sweden and Finland, and that general region will run into issues because of GPS interference by the Russians,” Buzzetti told Return. “The North Koreans do it, too. Basically all of the the main adversaries of the United States in some way or another practice GPS jamming. Whether it’s Iran going after bases … it’s a pretty consistent theme across the board.”
Because of this ongoing threat, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have all built a layer of protection surrounding their use of GPS.
“The United States and a lot of our Western allies are kind of uniquely vulnerable right now,” Buzzetti explained. “We rely a lot on the satellite signals, but in their own countries, they’ve been using some older technologies, some Cold War-era technologies and then newer terrestrial technologies to make sure that they’re not vulnerable to the same kind of attacks that we are.”
The technology Buzzetti is referring to ranges from unique and seemingly outdated to complex and futuristic.
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Aiden Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project
In a report about securing the U.S. 5G network and GPS infrastructure, Bull Moose wrote that enemies of the state have been hard at work “future-proofing” their positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities.
The same countries have engaged in “navigation warfare,” the document alleges, but have continuously implemented the following systems to give themselves a decisive strategic edge in electronic warfare:
Loran-C radio navigation network
This radio navigation system, first implemented in the 1950s, uses a receiver to determine its position by listening to low-frequency radio signals transmitted by radio beacons.
Operating at 100 kHz, China has continued its ongoing usage and integrated its systems with South Korea’s and Russia’s to create the regional Far East Radio Navigation Service, established in 1989.
Simply put, Loran-C is an old radio system that ships and planes use to calculate distance through the help of signals from radio towers.
Inertial navigation systems/quantum positioning
These systems use motion sensor and a computer to continuously calculate position based off a previously determined fixed point. In quantum positioning for example, gyroscopes and accelerometers are used to determine velocity and orientation without the use of external signals, unlike a GPS.
Gyroscopes measure angular velocity, while an accelerator measures the proper acceleration of an object, meaning how fast an object is speeding up or slowing down.
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A cell tower for 5G network among buildings is pictured on January 1, 2021 in Qingdao, Shandong Province of China. Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images
LEO satellites
In addition to these methods, China has significantly increased its use of low-Earth orbit satellites, launching dozens at a time as recently as this summer, along with launches dating back to 2024.
The result is now a network of LEO satellites that provides faster communication (internet), surveillance capabilities, and support for GPS systems that are much harder to jam than medium Earth orbit GPS signals.
Essentially, they could be considered China’s version of Starlink.
“China is ensuring that no single point of failure can knock out its navigation capabilities,” Buzzetti said, adding that if the United States does not work to shore up its systems, it could be vulnerable to attacks that take down entire categories of essential infrastructure. Because China has been diligent in ensuring it does not rely on GPS, he suggested, the United States should re-examine the companies that lobby and work within the United States on communications projects and, where necessary, abandon them.
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