Muni probes ominous ‘you hacked’ warning

Officials with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are looking into what caused a malfunction with fare machines at underground stations Friday and Saturday, a Muni spokesman said Sunday.

The malfunction, which began sometime Friday, caused the fare machines at all the underground stations to display the message “you hacked,” according to Muni spokesman Paul Rose.

Computer terminals used by SFMTA staff also displayed a similar warning:

.@sfmta_muni giving free rides today because hackers shut down the computer system. Employee computers showing this pic.twitter.com/fvVnUayWVG

— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) November 27, 2016

The incident resulted in passengers being unable to purchase transit tickets. Despite the malfunction, there was no impact to transit service, Rose said.

Tech publication The Verge contacted the e-mail address contained in the warning to SFMTA staff and published this portion of the response:

“we don’t attention to interview and propagate news ! our software working completely automatically and we don’t have targeted attack to anywhere ! SFMTA network was Very Open and 2000 Server/PC infected by software ! so we are waiting for contact any responsible person in SFMTA but i think they don’t want deal ! so we close this email tomorrow!”

As of Sunday, all fare machines at the stations were back to normal, according to Rose.

The incident remains under investigation, Rose said.

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