Ukraine state railway says online services partially restored after cyber attack

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia, the country’s largest carrier, has partially restored online services after a large-scale cyber attack hit passenger and freight transport systems, the company said on Thursday.

An outage was first reported on Sunday when the rail company notified passengers about a failure in its IT system and told them to buy tickets on site or on trains.

The company later said its online systems had been subjected to a large-scale targeted cyberattack.

"The online sales system of Ukrzaliznytsia has been restored in a backup format for the purchase of new train tickets and their refund," Ukrzaliznytsia said on Telegram.

"As the system is currently experiencing peak loads, there may be temporary technical interruptions, so we ask passengers to use the application only if they need to travel urgently."

The company said the first 12,000 tickets were purchased through Ukrzaliznytsia’s online services after their restoration.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)