AN ALLEGED hacker has been arrested after the Nightsleeper-style “abuse” of WiFI services at some of Britain’s biggest train stations.
An employee of Global Reach Technology – which provides some WiFi services to Network Rail – is being accused of hacking the system to make Islamophobic messaging pop up on users’ phones.
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British Transport Police (BTP) officers received reports about 5pm regarding “the defacement of splash pages”.
A serious security breach had the Network Rail sites telling users about apparent attacks on Europe in a phone pop-up.
It was a web page with the headline “We love you Europe”, followed by information about the terror incidents in the UK in a message branded as Islamophobic.
The attack on Wednesday evening has been compared to the BBC’s latest thriller Nightsleeper, which features a sleeper train travelling from Glasgow to London that is then hacked and hijacked.
The suspected cyber criminal was on Thursday night “arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and offences under the Malicious Communications Act 1988”, the BTP announced.
Cops say no-one’s personal data came under threat during the incident.
Wi-Fi systems, controlled by a third-party provider called Telent, are were down across all of the network’s 20 stations.
Those affected include Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street, Glasgow Central, Leeds City, Liverpool Lime Street, Bristol Temple Meads, Edinburgh Waverley, Reading and Guildford.
Network Rail also operates the following 11 stations in London also experiencing the outage; London Bridge, Canon Street, Charing Cross, Clapham Junction, Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, St Pancras International, Victoria and Waterloo.
A Network Rail spokesperson said: “We are currently dealing with a cyber security incident affecting the public Wi-Fi at Network Rail’s managed stations.”
London-based Global Reach Technology, established in 2009, is a system connecting users to WiFi networks.
It says it delivers a “better connectivity experience for operators, brands, and customers of the largest, most complex places and Wi-Fi networks.”
The company’s online about page continues: “Built for scale, our technology handles billions of Wi-Fi sessions and thousands of terabytes of data globally every year.”