San Francisco's urban rail system was attacked by hackers, demanding 100 bitcoins

As cyber threats increase, the security of public systems has become a target of hackers. According to foreign media reports, San Francisco's urban rail system was hacked last weekend, causing the computers of the entire city's transportation ticketing system (including stations) to be unable to operate normally, while the screen displayed a message posted by the attacker.

The message reads: "You have been attacked, all your data has been encrypted. Please contact ([email protected]) ID: 681 to request the key." From the above information, it is not difficult to infer that the transportation ticketing system should have been attacked by ransomware.

A spokesperson for the transportation department said that according to the information received, more than 2,000 devices in the entire system have been affected, but fortunately, the urban rail operation system has not been affected, and railway operations and transfer services can continue.

However, in order to avoid accidents, transportation department personnel have shut down all ticket machines in San Francisco's public transportation network system.

The spokesperson then noted that the attackers had demanded a ransom of 100 bitcoins (equivalent to $73,000) from the authorities, but no further details could be disclosed as the incident was still under investigation.

Although this was an intrusion into a transportation system that occurred abroad and was only an attack on the ticketing system, causing no casualties, it is clear that the social impact it caused will be enormous, and it has undoubtedly once again sounded the alarm for system security in the transportation industry.