SBB and Kanton Aargau also hit by hacker attack

The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and the canton of Aargau have been hit by the cyber attack on the company Xplain. Data has been stolen from both places, the SBB and the canton of Aargau announced on Sunday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency.

The NZZ reported on it for the first time on Sunday. According to the SBB, data was leaked as part of a data breach. The canton of Aargau also confirmed to have been affected by the attack on IT service provider Xplain: “According to the current state of knowledge, we assume that in addition to business correspondence, a small amount of operational data from error logs that Xplain had for analysis was also affected”, a canton spokeswoman said when asked.

The exact extent of the data theft will be further analyzed internally, as well as by Xplain and federal agencies, it said. Xplain has, among other things, developed applications for the cantonal prison services. The attackers exploited a vulnerability on the Xplain servers hosting this data. It is a so-called ransomware attack where data is stolen and then encrypted.

The attack on Xplain became known on June 3. The federal police service (Fedpol), the federal customs and border control service (BAZG) and the cantonal police, among others, are also affected. However, the attack on Xplain was separate from last Wednesday’s attack on Parliament’s website, a spokeswoman for the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) said last Thursday.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (BA) has opened proceedings over the attack on the Swiss parliament. According to reports in the Tamedia newspapers, proceedings have also been initiated by the Bern prosecutor’s office regarding the attack on Xplain.

In recent years, cyber attacks against companies, administrations and the media have increased. Only recently were the major media houses CH Media and NZZ affected. SBB was already hit by a cyber attack in February 2023. (saw/sda)