Mastodawn

Interesting case from #CERN where #Russia team leaving the project sabotaged continued operations of the module they delivered by refusing to supply documentation on its operations, thus threatening continuity of the project:

When CERN definitively ended its cooperation with Russia, engineers were left with Russian equipment for which complete documentation was lacking. Shutting down the equipment threatened to paralyse the key ALICE experiment. That’s when the Poles stepped in, figured out how the Russian equipment worked, reverse engineered it, and not only saved the project, but became key players in the Large Hadron Collider. Krystian Rosłon from the Warsaw University of Technology revealed the details of this incredible operation to the PAP Nauka news agency.

Source: https://spidersweb.pl/2026/02/rosjanie-cern-odejscie-polacy-zlamali.html (in Polish)

Rosjanie myśleli, że bez nich to nie zadziała. Polacy złamali ich sprzęt

Rosjanie odeszli z CERN i zabrali ze sobą wiedzę, bez której Wielki Zderzacz Hadronów mógł stanąć w miejscu. W tym momencie na scenę weszli polscy inżynierowie i naukowcy.

Spider's Web

kravietz 🦇Feb 20

The reverse engineered project and its upgrade is now available as open-source - extreme nerdness warning applies ⚠ 😄

https://github.com/alice-fit-fee-upgrade

@kravietz Poland:
⁃ jailbreaks Russian CERN module, releases the source
also Poland:
⁃ sues hackers for reverse-engineering DRM on trains

kravietz 🦇Feb 20

You’re kind of mixing systems of reference here 😉 It was not “Poland” who sued anyone, it was the private company making the backdoored trains who sued another private (municipal) company who bought the backdoored train from them.

@kravietz I know, I was being facetious

@acb @kravietz
Also Poland
- Did most of the theoretical legwork on breaking Enigma that Bletchley Park/Turing then applied and (later) got the credit for.

There’s a long history of reverse-engineering there.

kravietz 🦇Feb 21

True, there’s a very nice memorial now in Bletchley Park museum dedicated to the Polish code breakers!

No less interesting is the history of code breaking Russian communications in 1920 which allowed Poland to push back their offensive on Warsaw - it was much less popularized because “Poles breaking Soviet ciphers” wasn’t too politically correct after 1945 😉

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War

Polish–Soviet War - Wikipedia

@kravietz @acb Very interesting, thanks! Didn’t know about that side of things.

@acb
This is quantum poland
@kravietz

Rihards Olups Feb 20

@kravietz This could be a strong lesson everywhere to require full source, good documentation, peer review everywhere.
Could be :)

Ludwig Vielfrass Feb 23

@kravietz never bet against Polish scientists, especially if they can give the finger to Russia in the process.

João Costa 💚🇵🇹🇪🇺🇬🇧🇺🇦Feb 20

No point cooperating with russians. The country is a mess, the people aren't normal, it's just not worth it.

synlogic4242 Feb 20

@kravietz I'm shocked the Russians weren't evicted from ISS too, long ago. they've since 2014 at least to detangle/replace hardware, modules, personnel

Dr. Sobek Feb 21

@kravietz Well done Poles.

@kravietz And so a major flaw in their current operations is demonstrated. Blatant bus factor issues..

Bus factor - Wikipedia

Fazal Majid Feb 21

@kravietz Like how they took the Russian Strela B MANPADS, dramatically improved it to make the Grom, which is now defending Ukraine. Or how they made the mathematical breakthrough that made the Nazi Enigma machine solvable by the primitive computers of the day, but are seldom given credit by the British.

kravietz 🦇Feb 21

@fazalmajid I think there’s a new iteration of “Grom” that is even better - called “Piorun”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piorun_(missile)

Piorun (missile) - Wikipedia

@kravietz another example of how “everything is political”.

Bravo to the Poles!