Nothing is immune to being hacked when hackers are motivated. The same proved by hackers on Friday, when more than 2,000 computer systems at San Francisco's public transit agency were apparently got hacked. San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency, also known as MUNI, offered free rides on November 26th after MUNI station payment systems and schedule monitors got hacked by ransomware and station screens across the city started displaying a message that reads: " " According to the San Francisco Examiner, MUNI a Ransomware attack against the station fare systems, which caused them to shut down ticket kiosks and make rides free this weekend. As you can see, the above message delivered by the malware followed by an email address and ID number, which can then be used to arrange ransom payments. MUNI Spokesman Paul Rose said his agency was investigating the matter and "working to resolve the situation," but did not provide details as of how MUNI got hacked. " " said Rose. ." Trains themselves were not affected by the malware attack, and the MUNI claimed that the payments were resumed on the morning of November 27th. The MUNI looks after trains, trams and buses around the city, including San Francisco's iconic cable cars. It is yet not clear exactly who was responsible for the attack (besides a pseudonym " "), but according to local media reports, the agency's computers were being held by ransomware until the MUNI paid the equivalent of more than $73,000 in Bitcoin. Andy Saolis is a pseudonym commonly used in , which uses commercial tools to encrypt hard drives and network shares on Windows machines using randomly generated keys and then overwrite the hard disks' MBRs to prevent systems from booting up properly. The target machine is typically infected by accidentally opening a malicious executable in an email or download, and then the malware spreads out across the network. The email address, cryptom27@yandex.com, used by anonymous criminal points the city to a Russian email address to arrange payment and has been linked to other cyber attacks as well. When reaching at the provided email, the hacker provided a statement in broken English, which read: The same email address, cryptom27@yandex.com, was linked to a ransomware strain called in September. The ransomware employs tactics similar to those demonstrated against the MUNI systems. The hacker provided hoodline a list of systems the hacker claimed to have infected in Muni's network, which came out to be 2,112 of the total 8,656 computer networks. The hacker also said that the MUNI had "one more day" to make a deal. Not much about the hack is known; the extent of the hack and hacker's identity remain a mystery for now, but the incident once again reminds us that how vulnerable our critical infrastructure remains.
More than 2,000 computer systems belonging to San Francisco 's public transit agency were hacked on Friday . San Francisco 's Metropolitan Transit Agency ( MUNI ) confirmed a computer attack against its fare systems , which caused it to close its kiosks and offer free rides over the Internet . Following the attack , station screens displayed a message that said , " You Hacked , ALL Data Encrypted . Contact For Key(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 , 000 . " MUNI said it was investigating the incident and " working to resolve the matter " .