German railway operator Deutsche Bahn has confirmed that disruptions to its IT and booking systems on Tuesday were caused by a cyberattack.
The company did not specify who may have carried out the attack.
“Our countermeasures were effective in minimising the impact on our customers,” Deutsche Bahn said.
The company’s app and website had been experiencing problems the previous afternoon. By Tuesday evening, the company said the systems were “largely stable”, but further problems emerged on Wednesday morning. Some temporary restrictions in IT and booking systems were still in place.
The railway operator said it was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The aim of such attacks is usually to blackmail or sabotage companies or authorities, or to put political pressure on them.
Deutsche Bahn has previously been the target of what German authorities suspect were acts of sabotage, including damage to fibre optic cables and the forced stoppage of rail traffic.
German railway operator hit by cyberattack