Sydney Train rules out cyberattack after complete network shutdown

Sydney Trains has ruled out a cyberattack on its network after a system outage on Wednesday left commuters stranded during peak hours.

The train stopped for an hour at 2:45 pm after the driver lost contact with the digital radio system used to communicate between crew members.

Some passengers were stranded along the way, others were stranded on platforms or directed to buses and rideshare services.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longlund said engineers worked overnight to find the cause of the problem.

Take a look back at our live shutdown coverage

“We have done considerable work to determine the root cause of the incident…we believe it is not about cybersecurity,” Longlund said.

“It has never happened before … there has never been an incident of this magnitude.”

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He said there was a “component failure” that would normally automatically redirect the network to the backup system, but in this case the backup system failed.

This meant that engineers had to manually find and fix faults before trains could resume.

On Thursday morning, the trains were running according to their regular timetable.

Longland said the wireless communication system, which has been installed since 2016, had undergone a software upgrade.

“That may have been a factor in this incident,” he said.

“We’re monitoring it closely. Our engineers are on site and working overnight to monitor the system while we investigate over the next few days.”

He said the next step would be to examine the data logs to figure out why the failure occurred and prevent it from happening again.