Vusumuzi Dube
Nineteen major railway stations across Britain including ten in London have been hit by a major cyber attack impacting their public wi-fi systems for passengers.
Network Rail confirmed London Euston, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Birmingham New Street and Glasgow Central were among those impacted.
British Transport Police launched an investigation after travellers logging into the wi-fi at stations reported seeing a message about terror attacks in Europe.
Wi-fi at the affected stations is controlled by a third-party provider called Telent, and MailOnline understands other organisations have also been impacted by the attack.
The wi-fi landing page following the hack said ‘We love you, Europe’ and contained information about terror attacks, according to users posting on social media.
The attack has been compared to the BBC‘s new drama Nightsleeper which features a sleeper train travelling from Glasgow to London which is hacked and hijacked.
The wi-fi was still down this morning at the stations, which also include Bristol Temple Meads, Edinburgh Waverley, Leeds, Guildford and Reading.
The ten London stations affected were Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Clapham Junction, Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, London Bridge, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo.
According to its website, Telent helps design, build, support and manage some of the UK’s ‘critical digital infrastructure’, and its other customers include Openreach, Transport for London (TfL), National Highways, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the NHS Ambulance Radio Programme.
It has not yet been confirmed if any of Telent’s other customers have been impacted by the incident.
Among the cyber security experts commenting on the attack today was Alex Richards, director of Liberate IT Services, who told MailOnline: ‘This will have been a malicious actor directly targeting the public wi-fi for propaganda purposes or to promote an agenda.
‘Public wi-fi is always isolated and firewalled from any other network so there will be no risk to data held or processed by Network Rail themselves. Public wi-fi is the easiest target due to its accessibility, and the most visible when tampered with.
‘The only potential danger is that anyone else using the public wi-fi at the time could have had their data snooped. This is where information being sent from/to your device on the public wi-fi is inspected and listened to.
‘This is why it is important to only use encrypted services on public wi-fi, or a VPN service using encryption. Better yet, stay clear of public wi-fi and use your 4G or 5G data service.’
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter