Ticket machines back online after suspected cyber attack

NORTHERN has assured customers that no personal or payment information was compromised after a suspected cyber attack that led to some of its self-service ticket machines being out of use for five weeks. The issue was first identified in July, just two months after the completion of a £17m project by the train operator to install more than 600 of the ticket vending machines (TVMs) at stations across its network. Flowbird, which manages the TVM software, says it launched its major incident procedure and all of Northern’s TVMs were taken off-line as a precaution. Northern said it was continuing to work closely with Flowbird and was in the process of visiting all of the machines, which are installed at 420 locations, in order to ensure there were no ongoing issues. As of mid-August, around 95% of the TVMs were back in use. A spokesman for Flowbird added: “This is being undertaken progressively in a programme that ensures that the machines are brought back online in a safe and secure way for the benefit of Northern customers. This includes checking all machines and network environments to ensure that every part of the system is functioning securely.”