Transport for London Has Been Hit by a Cyberattack

• Transport for London (TfL), the agency that manages a massive portion of the city's public transport, confirmed on September 2 that it had been hit by a cyberattack.
• Thankfully, no customer data was stolen - the attack also doesn't seem to have affected operations.
• However, the investigation is still ongoing, helmed by the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre.

London's transport network, Transport for London (TfL), has been hit by a cyberattack. The news was confirmed by the agency itself on September 2. TIL deals with most of the public transport network in the city, starting from buses and Crossrail to the underground train network.

The backroom systems of TfL have been affected as a result of which the staff has been asked to work from home for now.

Although a full assessment is yet to be done, it seems like no customer data has been stolen and at the time of writing, there seems to be no effect of the attack on operations either.

The credit for this goes to the agency that took immediate action after detection to prevent the threat actors from accessing its systems.

If the threat actors had actually managed to accomplish their goals (which it looks like they didn't), the impact would have been far-reaching. More than 4 million passengers would be affected. In addition to the massive data breach, the whole city would come to a standstill.

What's Being Done to Resolve the Situation?

Right now, TfL is working with government agencies - the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre - to get to the roots of the issue and resolve it.

This was confirmed by an NCSC spokesperson who said that they are working with both the TIL and other law enforcement agencies to understand the full extent of the impact.

We have introduced a number of measures to our internal systems to deal with this ongoing cyber security incident.' - Shashi Verma, TfL's Chief Technology Officer

Customers have also been notified about the attack through email. And for some reason, the sign-in page for Oyster and Contactless used to make payments for journeys on TFL has been offline since the attack. Officials are claiming it's for maintenance but we don't know if it's connected to the attack.

UK Parliament's Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) had warned in December last year that the country's critical infrastructure was very vulnerable to cyberattacks and ransomware attacks. This cyberattack has come at a time when the UK is already struggling with one of the worst riots in its history.

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