Transport for London suffers ‘ongoing’ cybersecurity incident, leading to potential traffic issues

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that it’s dealing with an ongoing cybersecurity incident.

TfL said that there’s no indication that customer data has been compromised. The attack hasn’t impacted its services, and everything should be working as normal.

However, insiders told BBC London that they have been told to work from home if possible, hinting at potential travel issues.

The BBC was also told that the attack predominantly affected TfL’s backroom systems at corporate headquarters.

In the announcement, TfL said, “The security of our systems and customer data is very important to us, and we have taken immediate action to prevent any further access to our systems.”

The travel provider added that it’s working closely with government agencies to help mitigate and remediate the incident.

Details are scarce but TfL did say that further information will be disclosed once the incident is resolved.

William Wright, CEO of Closed Door Security, a Scottish IT security service, said "The big question people will also want to know is who carried out the attack and if it can be attributed to another country, like Russia. TfL was also attacked by Russia last year, so it definitely isn’t out of the realms of possibility. Furthermore, given Russia’s recent uptick in attacks on the West, it wouldn’t be surprising, but it is far too early to speculate."

"Given that so little information has been provided, there has been some negative conversation online with internet users wanting to know why TfL has even revealed the incident when it hasn’t impacted customer data or services. These are understandable questions, but TfL has a duty to report incidents, non-disclosure would be far worse," Wright said.