These posts hit a nerve. We are vilified by our corporate masters every day of our lives, so scenarios were somebody else is also vilified are very much credible.
Iām bothered by the complete casual nature of his manufactured hyperbole and his ability to report his personal, highly biased inferences as fact.
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There are no reports, on Practical Machinist or any other machinist forums, of Mori using the ITAR lockout as a ābusiness opportunityā to enforce financing arrangements. This scenario was entirely fabricated by Cory.
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The existence of the ITAR lockout does not, in any way, speak to the open, closed or opaque nature of the rest of the CNC control. Again, without any evidence, Cory infers that the addition of this one feature is indicative of some nefarious motive or structure. In reality, CNC controls are a replaceable, competitive component. Mori will be happy to sell you their machines with one of 3 other companyās controls. Really motivated owners can swap them out themselves (really motivated).
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Finally, the notion that a Stuxnet-like worm could cause a CNC center to - undetected! - start producing car parts that will kill you is just such unmitigated claptrap that it isnāt even really worth addressing. Basic knowledge of the manufacturing process would preclude this from ever happening.
I am truly disturbed by the ease at which Cory threw off the above points and reported them as fact. He takes a few facts presented in the PM thread and spins them into wildly unsubstantiated conclusions with no links to sources, no indication that he drew those conclusions from interviews or other discussion. It is almost as if he is suffering from a pathology that causes him to draw the most nefarious conclusions about a companyās motivations and believe them without question.
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Youād have a point if the issue was infecting the machine to begin with. The issue is detecting an infection. Also, thereās no guarantee they didnāt put a highly effective lock on an open or crappy door.
@gak_pdx I do agree that the post is heavy on the jumping to conclusions part. I have spent some time working in a factory before and I can say with confidence that defective parts have the potential to pass unnoticed (lets just say that I wonāt be buying a Honda Civic any time soon, at least not with a windshield processed in Canada) however I agree with your conclusion that deliberate sabotage is unlikely (though I do include a quote from Zai on that front) dicking about breakage on the other hand, seems to be a possibility (sitting outside a factory and faking the GPS signal for giggles would be an example, though it would take a lot of work and research on top of knowing that a particular machine is running so it seems unlikely). Although your list of grievances is long and I really donāt know where the business opportunity bit came from, considering the cost of those machines, (shoving people about with a gyroscope and a GPS seems like bad practice) I still think waiting for a pattern of posts with extras from Cory would be better thanā¦ahemā¦jumping to conclusions.
Iām not. He has quite the experience with this m.o.
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Makes some sense. We have some problematic neighbors here in Japan with an odd case where things get mis labeled for export to the neighbors. This is sometimes aided by people who have spent their whole lives in Japan yet are citizens of the neighboring country through a fluke of history.
I wonder if they read the EULA before signing the contract?
It would be simpler from the Sellers end to include a 100 yard movement clause.
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Sounds like really good incentive to reverse-engineer a high-end CNC machine.
This
Is
FUD
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I tend to think itās annoying and yet another example of how DRM sucks. But FUD? I donāt see much fear. Uncertainty and doubt have always been valid parts of the discussion around DRM and the DCMA.
You misunderstand me ActionAbe. Iām not commenting on any part of the discussion (thatās why I didnāt reply to anyone). Iām commenting on the article itself.
The mentions of stuxnet like virii, opaque code, and the like places the article squarely in the type of media that offers nothing but fear, uncertainty, and doubt either intentionally or by misrepresentation and erroneous conclusions like we see here.
This is about warranties, precision of setup, and quality control and not some evil plot by a CNC maker.
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Why wouldnāt they just set the GPS to not work if the machine is located in forbidden countries?
MechMate sounds interesting, a RepRap for routing machines. However, we ARE discussing machines that CNC metals. Which is several times more difficult than an automated router table working wood, plexiglass, or plastic. ā¦
Yeah, I didnāt appreciate the difference between a CNC router and a CNC mill when I posted this. They are definitely not the same thing, or in the same league WRT engineering complexity, etc.
I work in software development for a CNC machine builder. We donāt do anything like this. I suppose some countries may have a requirement for this sort of thing for export control, but I suspect itās really there to prevent somebody from leasing a machine and then selling it to somebody else and skipping. As to the stuxnet-type fears, itās best not to be connected to an insecure network. Also, the parts made by the machine have to be checked anyway, so if somebody did alter the part program the parts produced wouldnāt pass QA. The hack would amount to an act of petty vandalism, with the machine shop simply losing the time and material invested in the defective parts.
With my job being part of the IT department for a company who works on these things, I can tell you in no uncertain termsā¦
The issues of security are NOT in the big honking machines. The issue is in the WinXP machines that are in various states of unpatched, antiquated anti-virus installs, and thousands and thousands of pinholes in the firewall for things likeā¦ RDP and VNC.
These machines are not an issue of being hacked to make bad parts. All our parts are checked outside the machine with dial gauges and digital calipers before anything is sent to the client. So, even if they were being hackedā¦ we would notice because all of the parts would be marked as badā¦ and then we could track down what did itāerror on the machine (Unlikely) or error by the human operator/programmerā¦ sadly, the latter is the most likely.
(THE WINXP THING HAS ME SCARED TO DEATH OF APRIL YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA)
The manufacturer has the right to do most of these kinds of things. However they need to disclose that they have done them. If I am in fact not PURCHASING the thing I think I am buying from you, but I am in fact renting it from you, or buying a license to operate the device then we need to make sure we are crystal clear on that point. If I buy a machine tool and I feel like taking it apart and moving it about willy-nilly and it is what we used to call āmineā which is when you actually own something and donāt have get permission from the person you already paid for it, to grind it into dust, catch it on fire, move it upstairs etc.
I feel I failed to include that I think itās all fair and nifty if they install a GPS device that can invalidate the warranty or disable a machine that is under a lease or something. Thatās an entirely different kettle of fish.
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