Security News > 2021 > July > Northern Train's ticketing system out to lunch as ransomware attack shuts down servers

Publicly owned rail operator Northern Trains has an excuse somewhat more technical than "Leaves on the line" for its latest service disruption: a ransomware attack that has left its self-service ticketing booths out for the count.

A representative for Northern Trains referred further questions on to Flowbird Transport, which provides the ticketing system in question, telling us "It's their system that's been affected."

Northern Trains partnered with Flowbird in a £17m-and-counting scheme to update its self-service ticketing facilities in 2016.

The publicly owned Northern Trains took over the operation of the Northern rail franchise from Arriva Rail North in March last year, after poor performance from the previous franchise holder gave the government cause to step in.

Northern Trains' public-facing news page failed to mention any ransomware attack but blamed the ongoing outage on unspecified "Technical difficulties."

"The only way to recover quickly and easily from a ransomware attack is to remove all infected data and run full system and virtual machine level recoveries of the web servers and IT systems which have been exploited." .

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/northern_trains_ticketing_system/