14 DAY TRIAL // It turns out that you don’t need to know how to breach a company computer network or be a genius programmer to stop trains from running. Script Kiddiez that possess the skills to bring down a government site could easily bring rail networks to a standstill.
Stefan Katzenbeisser, a professor at Technische Universitat Darmstadt in Germany believes that a denial-of-service (DoS) attack can be launched due to the wireless signals utilized in railway switching systems, Hindusan Times reports.
“Trains could not crash, but service could be disrupted for quite some time," said Katzenbeisser.
It appears that the signals sent from trains to the switching systems found at railway junctions are unprotected and could be used to facilitate cyberattacks.
The researcher’s latest discovery only comes to further demonstrate that components of critical infrastructures are more exposed to cybercriminal operations than ever, due to the unsecure technologies used.