DDoS attacks disrupted Deutsche Bahn operations for hours

German state-owned railway transportation company Deutsche Bahn said it suffered waves of distributed denial of service attacks targeting its IT systems that affected its information and booking systems.

 

The rail operator said the wave of "considerable" denial of service attacks, that targeted its bahn.de and DB Navigator services, began around the afternoon of February 17 and continues to cause periodic disruption to the two services.

 

Deutsche Bahn first announced disruptions to the two services at 4:45 PM on Tuesday and at 7 PM, stated that the two digitised services had largely been stabilised. However, the transporter again announced on the following morning that its information and booking systems were under attack and its IT experts were working on root cause analysis and troubleshooting.

 

The company stated at 11 AM on Wednesday that the two services had been restored again, but continued to face limited disruptions due to persistent denial-of-service attacks.

 

"Deutsche Bahn has been and continues to be subject to attacks on its IT systems. The current attack is specifically targeted at DB and has occurred in waves," the transporter said. "The scale of the attack is considerable. Our defense mechanisms are working. We will not comment on speculation regarding the background of the attack. We are in close contact with the federal authorities.

 

"Our top priority remains the protection of customer data and the availability of our information and booking systems, which are accessed via IT interfaces on other platforms in addition to bahn.de and the DB Navigator app by hundreds of thousands of travelers in Germany," it added.

 

Deutsche Bahn operates over 33,000 kilometres of railway track, runs over 40,000 daily train services and ferries approximately 5.5 million passengers daily. The company expects to earn a revenue in excess of 28 billion euros in 2025, which will contribute towards reducing its overall debt significantly.

 

The railway operator was also hit hard by the wave of WannaCry ransomware attacks in 2017 that disrupted operations at hundreds of thousands of organisations worldwide. The attacks affected Deutsche Bahn’s digital passenger information displays at stations, forcing the company to deploy extra staff at stations with high passenger volumes to stabilise operations.