“Cybersecurity incident” affects Wi-Fi networks at the UK’s largest train stations

The public Wi-Fi network at around 19 stations managed by Britain's Network Rail was hacked and remains inaccessible on Thursday while the British Transport Police (BTP) investigates the cyberattack.

Network Rail said a number of London stations, including London Euston and Paddington, as well as Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central were among the targets. Passengers who tried to log into public Wi-Fi at stations managed by Network Railway were confronted with a screen displaying a message about terrorist attacks in Europe.

“There was a cybersecurity incident on public Wi-Fi at 19 Network Rail-managed stations last night and it was quickly taken offline,” a Network Rail spokesperson said.

“The incident is subject to a full investigation. The WiFi is provided by a third party, is standalone and is a simple “Click & Connect” service that does not collect any personal information. Once our final security checks are completed, “We expect service to be restored by the weekend,” the spokesperson said.

Telent, the company that manages the Wi-Fi system, said the attack, first reported on Wednesday evening, came from someone running the Wi-Fi homepage and the matter was now being handled by police.

“An unauthorized change was made to the Network Rail landing page from a legitimate Global Reach administrator account and the matter is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the British Transport Police (BTP),” Telent’s statement said.

BTP said the investigation is progressing at full speed: “We received reports of a cyberattack at around 5.03pm yesterday (Wednesday) which resulted in anti-Islamic messages being displayed on some Network Rail WiFi services. We are working with Network Rail to investigate the incident at pace.” Earlier this month, Transport for London (TfL) was hit by a cyberattack, with fears that customer data may have been breached. A teenager from Walsall, West Midlands, has been arrested in connection with the TfL hack.

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