Metro suffered a cyber attack last week that caused its main website to be down for several hours, News4 has learned.
On the night of May 7, Metro realized something was wrong. In a tweet at 7:51 p.m., Metro said its website WMATA.com was temporarily down. It was later revealed that Metro had been under a cyberattack.
Your website will not be fully restored until approximately 2 hours later.
“Last Tuesday, Metro's website suffered a denial of service attack,” Metro said in a statement. “None of our customer or employee data was compromised, nor was wmata.com. Additionally, our services, including the SmarTrip app and mobile transactions, were not affected.”
Cybersecurity expert Steve McKeon says this kind of hacking, or denial of service, idea is wreaking havoc and harm.
“So what they're trying to do is make it impossible for hackers to flood the network and manipulate it,” McKeon said. “It's like this: Imagine you have a hose and you're running water through it. They're running more water than they can handle.”
“Here's the problem,” he said. “They're trying to get as much value out of you as possible. They go in and look around and see where there's the most value.”
Metro says it does deal with cyber-attacks and hacks frequently.
But McKeon says this could be a red flag and Metro should check its IT systems.
“These hackers are pretty smart, so I hope they don't find anything, but you never know,” McKeon said. “So I think they should definitely take a closer look.”
He believes passengers' SmarTrip accounts and personal information are safe after this cyberattack.
Metro officials notified the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This is because the TSA has a vested interest in the cybersecurity of ground and air transportation.
TSA said the Federal Transit Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are also now aware of the cyberattack.
