Sydney Trains rule out hacking as cause of system collapse

As many Real Sydney commuters will be aware, Sydney Trains experienced an unprecedented outage yesterday that ground the entire Sydney rail network to a halt during peak-hour, causing massive delays and inconvenience - but they've been quick to deny suggestions of a cyber attack on the network as the cause of the disruption.

Trains stopped just prior to 3pm after drivers lost contact with the digital radio system that is used for communication between train crews, posing a massive risk to safety and co-ordination. The outage resulted in some passenger-carrying trains being stuck between stations, while commuters left stranded on platforms were advised to take buses or ride-share options.

This is despite the fact that the train system collapse had an immediate and similar impact on a bus network unprepared for such a significant increase in passengers, while ride share services were reported to have increased their prices to the point of extortion due to demand.

With engineers working overnight to establish the cause of the issue, Sydney Trains CEO Matt Longland has attributed the collapse to 'component failure'. Though he refused to entertain the possibility of a cyber attack, he admitted that a software upgrade currently being rolled out across the radio communication system may have played a role.

"We've done quite a bit of work to identify the root cause of the incident," Longland told the ABC.

"We don't believe it was anything around cyber security.

"It's never happened before, we've never had an incident of this scale."

"(The upgrade) may have been a factor."

While a component failure would typically result in the network being automatically directed to backup system, that backup system failed, meaning engineers had to manually find and repair the fault before services could resume. They are now monitoring the system over the coming days while also examining recent data logs to determine how the issue occurred.

It has now been reported that Sydney Trains is investigating the possibility of reimbursing customers for the inconvenience they experienced yesterday, though it remains to be seen if this is deemed a feasible option.