Media have reported that the transportation public of the city of San Francisco was hacked during this weekend, so that was running free for thousands of passengers.
According to information from The Guardian (via Eurogamer), the system of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was the victim of an attack from Malware last Friday in an episode where more than 2100 computers were infected and the attackers demanded a reward of 100 bitcoin (around USD $73,000) to restore the service.
It should be noted that the attack did not affect directly to the movement or control of the light-rail system, but that it was addressed to the ticketsales system, which caused the machines to show messages like “Free Metro”, “out of service” or “Hacked” and that users could make their trips without having to pay.
This obviously made many thought in the recently released video game Watch Dogs 2 which is set in San Francisco and where is possible to hack all kind of systems, including public transport. And although there was clueless people who thought that it was a Black Friday promotion, others joked with the theme the Group DedSec to blame or asking if everything was part of the promotional campaign of the Ubisoft game.
Man… the Watch Dogs 2 marketing campaign has stepped up. https://t.co/Nnzc3WWj8a
-Mark Buckley (@LiteralZero) November 27, 2016
Do Ahem, @watchdogsgame was this you?
Half kidding. #WatchDogs2 https://t.co/M7hdWBSfkn-Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) November 27, 2016
‘ You hacked’ appears on Muni screens across San Francisco https://t.co/xPDQ06IYdJ pic.twitter.com/YZcX8nTnHp
-San Francisco CA (@SF_CA_RR) November 27, 2016
Someone hacked the San Francisco Muni public transit system. They don’t know who. Fares are free until resolved. https://t.co/r8l01Iu3Fw
-Micah Lee (@micahflee) November 27, 2016
The authorities are currently investigating to find those responsible, so we will be attentive to details.
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