Riders travel for free on San Francisco’s transport system after hackers breach system and demand ransom.

San Francisco’s transport agency has been hit by a hack attack which led to customers being able to travel for nothing.

The hackers have made a ransom demand of 100 Bitcoin, which amounts to about $70,000 (£56,000 ; €66,000).

As a precaution, staff shut off all ticketing machines on the network.

Computers across the city’s transport network, including at stations, were disabled with screens displaying a message from the attackers.

The message read: “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 ,Enter”.

Yandex is a Russian internet company that, among other things, provides email and social networking tools.

The trains themselves were not affected – and city officials said a full investigation was underway.

‘2,000 machines hacked’

“There has been no impact to the transit service, to our safety systems or to our customer’s personal information,” a spokesman told the BBC.

Source: Hackers hit San Francisco transport systems – BBC News