A suspected cyberattack on Italy’s state railway disrupts ticket sales


Following a suspected cyberattack, Italian railway company Ferrovie dello Stato announced the temporary closure of ticket booths and disruption of certain sale services on Wednesday.

“Since this morning, elements that could be linked to a cryptolocker infection have been detected on the computer network of Trenitalia and RFI,” the company said in a statement, Reuters reports.

The network is currently being investigated. In the meantime, ticket booths are temporarily closed, and self-service ticket machines are deactivated as a precautionary measure.

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The investigation is not affecting online ticket sales. Passengers can still use trains as normal and purchase tickets directly from the conductor.

The rail traffic is also unaffected.

An anonymous security source told Italian news agency Ansa that Russian hackers are responsible for the cyberattack. However, there is currently no confirmation of that information.

Last week, Poland’s and Italy’s railway networks experienced significant malfunctions in the electronic control systems that resulted in major delays and train cancellations. In Poland, a cybersecurity team was tasked with investigating the issue. The Italian outage was allegedly not linked to a cyberattack, but rather happened due to a computer bug in signaling software, according to Alstom, a mobility solutions company.