San Francisco's Transport Hit By Hack Attack
agency has been hit by a hack
attack which led to customers
being able to travel for nothing.
The hackers have made a
ransom demand of 100 Bitcoin,
which amounts to about $70,000
(£56,000 ; €66,000).
As a precaution, staff shut off
all ticketing machines on the
network.
Computers across the city’s
transport network, including at
stations, were disabled with
screens displaying a message
from the attackers.
The message read: “You
Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted.
Contact For Key
(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 ,
Yandex is a Russian internet
company that, among other
things, provides email and
social networking tools.
The trains themselves were not
affected – and city officials said
a full investigation was
underway.
“There has been no impact to
the transit service, to our safety
systems or to our customer’s
personal information,” a
spokesman told the BBC.
“The incident remains under
investigation, so it wouldn’t be
appropriate to provide any
additional details at this point.”
The Municipal Transportation
Agency – known as Muni –
looks after trains, trams and
buses around the city, including
San Francisco’s iconic cable
cars.
On Sunday, ticketing machines
were back up – but it was not
clear if the hack had been
contained.
San Francisco news site
Hoodline told the BBC the
hacker had provided a list of
machines he or she claimed to
have infected in Muni’s
network – more than 2,000 in
total.
It appeared to include many
employee terminals as well as
machines that may be used to
look after payroll and
employees’ personal
information.
The hacker told Hoodline on
Sunday that Muni had “one
more day” to make a deal.
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