Transit Stations at San Francisco become Victim of Hack

The fearful hack, which was widely apprehended, eventually took place in the Silicon Valley when the system of one prominent rapid transit was recently attacked. The San Francisco Municipal Railway, which in short is called Muni, was apparently under hackers' grasp on Saturday following news about terminals all over different stations exhibiting a missive that they were hacked with their entire data encrypted.

Consequently, none of the payment machines was functioning, compelling free rides from the transportation facility to the public. As per observation by San Francisco Examiner, starting from Friday, hackers controlled Muni's system leading to locking of fare gates while wide open at the subway as well as being electronically non-functioning. Paul Rose the transit service's spokesperson said they had opened the gates indefinitely so they could provide free service from Muni. Kotaku.com posted this, November 27, 2016.

During the weekend of Thanksgiving, which is a holiday, but usually busy, the transit service wasn't stopped, however, it became necessary to take the ticket machines offline from Friday evening to the whole of Saturday following the hackers' missive on PC-screens of Muni agents. The transit service, to take precaution, served free rides to customers through the Metro trails of Muni while investigation went on to assess the hack's intensity as also its potential impacts.

As the subway stations of Muni suffered outages from the afternoon of Friday, all the delays as also other unavoidable problems occurred Saturday afternoon.

At some quarters it was claimed the breach remained for days while employees were affected. Expanding on that assertion, Hoodline stated the assault weakened e-mails, servers containing crucial databases, payroll and training systems. Of all worries, the greatest was that Muni might've had its information collected over days permanently lost to hackers provided no quick backup was done.

It is probable that a phishing attack on a Muni worker was behind the damage though it can't yet be said for certain.

City systems targeted with a hack is often shown in Hollywood movies, however, they're now found more and more as real threat besides other contests to municipal safety such as those against computer-regulated power and water.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/30/2016