Denmark’s largest train operator hit by service crippling DDoS attack

Another day, another DDoS attack causing passengers a great deal of trouble.

The largest train operating company in Danmark “Danske Statsbaner” (DSB or Danish State Railways) suffered a massive DDoS attack (distributed denial-of-service) on Sunday causing service disruption across the country.

The DDoS attack was quite powerful as it halted train operations and blocked travelers from buying tickets. The attack also affected company’s website, ticket machines, app and 7-Eleven kiosks inside railway stations.

Furthermore, DSB’s internal telephone and mail system was also affected by the DDoS attack. The motive and the intensity of the attack is still unknown however according to CPH Post, at the time of publishing this article, the targeted train system was back to normal.

Denmark under cyber attacks

It was just last week when Copenhagen city’s bicycle sharing company Bycyklen had its system compromised by unknown hackers. In the attack, around 1,800 bikes were affected and prevented riders from using them.

In the attack, hackers erased everything from Bycyklen’s system forcing the entire system to go offline. The company was then forced to update each and every one of their bikes in the city manually.

European train system vulnerable

Although Europe has one of the best train networks in the world it is also exposed to life-threatening cyber attacks. In 2016, a group of whiteHat Russian hackers exposed numerous vulnerabilities in the train system of several European railway companies that could be exploited by malicious hackers and terrorists to derail or even hijack a train.

In October 2017, the official website of Transportstyrelsen, Sweden’s Transport Agency (STA) came under a series of DDoS attacks forcing its system to go offline. The attack was conducted just a day after the IT systems of Sweden’s Transport Administration (Trafikverket), which monitors railway traffic, was attacked by hackers leading to delays in trains schedule.

Note: 

If you are running a business; calculate the cost and probability of a DDoS attack on your business with this DDoS Downtime Cost Calculator.