TFL Cyber Attack.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

So, TFL computer system is down due to a cyber attack. OK, these things happen. But......the attack was on 1 September. Here we are nearly 2 months later. Who the hell it sorting this? I was over charged by £10 for a journey back in 3rd week of september and no one can deal with it!.

[Waffles16]

Ridiculous it has taken so long. Kids cannot get their student discount cards and friend cannot get her Over 60 free card. Will TfL reimburse fares if you can prove having to pay in the meantime?

Should be a news story but have not seen anything yet.

[bigandclever]

Waffles16 said:

Should be a news story but have not seen anything yet.

Can't be looking very hard, it's been all over the place. They managed to arrest the suspect a month ago.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

bigandclever said:

Waffles16 said:

Should be a news story but have not seen anything yet.

Can't be looking very hard, it's been all over the place. They managed to arrest the suspect a month ago.

I've seen nothing on TV. The organisation that runs the capital's transport under cyber attack, and 2 months later still not fixed.....this should be lead story on the national 10pm news.

[C n C]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

bigandclever said:

Waffles16 said:

Should be a news story but have not seen anything yet.

Can't be looking very hard, it's been all over the place. They managed to arrest the suspect a month ago.

I've seen nothing on TV. The organisation that runs the capital's transport under cyber attack, and 2 months later still not fixed.....this should be lead story on the national 10pm news.

Whilst the original story did make the news, along with the arrest of the 17 year old suspect back in September, there has been little coverage of the ongoing issue, and certainly it hasn't been on the TV at any point recently that I've seen.

The service outage for Oystercards, including processing refunds is, it would seem, not due to a continuing cyber attack, but rather that these systems were taken offline by TfL to remove them from external access, and the work to ensure that any possible vulnerabilities are properly fixed is taking significant time, but needs to be completed before they are re-enabled.

Co-incidentally, earlier today, I checked the TfL website yet again to see whether they were now issuing 60+ Oystercards (my wife is eligible for one), only to be met with the same statement that they, along with refunds, under 16 zip cards etc.. cannot be applied for still - so no change there then.

I then spent a bit of time trying to find out more, and if there was any idea of when their systems would be available again, and found the following couple of articles.

London Centric article about the ongoing impact this is having both for customers and for TfL.

Standard article indicating that new applications for Oystercards to re-open "soon", but as with many public statements, it's long on sentiment, and extremely short on detail with TfL giving no concrete dates, or even any idea what "soon" actually means.

I think that one of the reasons it hasn't been on mainstream TV news and generally high profile news sources is that there isn't a lot to report on - basically nothing is happening - the affected systems are offline, and TfL are "working on it" (still). No definite fix date, and no details about a timetable for restoring services.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I do believe that they are trying to get this sorted, with a lot of people working very hard behind the scenes, but there's no getting away from the fact that whilst new applications for these discounted and free travel cards are not available, and refunds cannot be processed, it is saving TfL a significant amount of money. Despite the fact that TfL say that they will refund any additional costs incurred by people having to pay full price, there will be many thousands of pounds which don't get claimed, and significant interest gained by TfL from the monies they end up holding as a result of the systems being unavailable.

I certainly agree with the headline of the first article I linked to about it being a stshow.