Security: Attack on railway project: Cyber attack on the Brenner Base Tunnel company

Vienna. The project company for the Brenner Base Tunnel between Austria and Italy has become the target of a cyber attack.

BBT SE, which is building the rail tunnel, announced that the unknown perpetrators accessed parts of data that were accessible from the Internet. The “Tiroler Tageszeitung” had previously reported.

This targeted attack in mid-October did not pose any danger to the construction or subsequent operation of the 64-kilometer-long tunnel, a BBT spokesman told the German Press Agency. High-security data is not affected. The spokesman did not provide any information about possible perpetrators or background. The investigation is being conducted by Italian authorities as the BBT is based in Bolzano.

The Brenner Base Tunnel is considered an important European infrastructure project. The 11.7 billion euro structure is expected to significantly shorten journeys between Germany and Italy from 2034.

Most recently, the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel project between Germany and Denmark was affected by a cyber attack in mid-October. The attack on the contractor Femern Link Contractors (FLC) temporarily affected several of the construction site's IT systems, as the parent project company Femern A/S announced.

This approximately 18 kilometer long tunnel is intended to connect the German Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland and thereby shorten the travel time by train between Hamburg and Copenhagen to around two and a half hours.

A few days ago, unknown people in several federal states are said to have hacked into the controls of supermarket freezers and increased the temperatures there. There had previously been similar cases in other European countries.

The secret services are concerned about cyber attacks on German supermarkets. “The incidents are the subject of current intelligence investigations,” said the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The Handelsblatt reported about it. The Joint Center for Combating Hybrid Threats is also dealing with the attacks.

The Federal Intelligence Service and the Military Counterintelligence Service are also involved in the center. “The current findings indicate that known vulnerabilities in the affected control systems are being exploited,” said the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said there was no information that could be used to attribute the attacks to a specific actor or government agency.