The number of attacks by Russian hackers on railways in the EU is growing

Russia has made “thousands of attempts” to damage European railway infrastructure in the two years since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine began. This was stated by the Minister of Transport of the Czech Republic Martin Kupka to the British edition Financial Times.

According to the minister, we are talking primarily about hacker attacks. They target the signaling and computer systems of railway operators, in particular the Czech state railway company. One of these attacks was said to have crippled an electronic ticketing system in the past. Kupka expressed concern that such attacks could lead to malfunctions of signaling systems, which, in turn, could lead to serious train accidents. He described the situation as “quite difficult”, but noted that at the moment the protection against hacker attacks is working well.

It is not clear from the words of the Czech minister whether any of the attacks, other than the mentioned failure in ticket sales, achieved success. Recently, the number of railway incidents has increased in the Czech Republic, including associated with the failure of the alarm systemhowever, none of them, according to official data, were associated with external interference in the system.

As the FT notes, while hacking attacks on the EU’s energy infrastructure are well documented, less is known about similar attacks on transport systems. Such attempts were first reported last year, in message The EU cybersecurity agency spoke about Russian-linked hacker groups targeting the railways of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania.