Newshot Seat reservation system for Keisei Electric Railway’s limited express “Keisei Skyliner” in Japan hacked, disrupting ticket purchases for passengers traveling from Narita Airport to Ueno, Tokyo
IT Home News, November 15: Keisei Electric Railway announced on November 13 that the seat reservation system for the “Keisei Skyliner” limited express, which runs between Narita Airport and Ueno, Tokyo, was illegally accessed by hackers late at night on November 11. As many as approximately 3.37 million pieces of users’ personal information may have been leaked, including user IDs, passwords, names in katakana, phone numbers, and email addresses.
Keisei Electric Railway said that to prevent further security risks, the company has placed its official website under emergency maintenance and suspended multiple Skyliner online reservation and ticket-purchasing services, including Skyliner Ticketless Service, Skyliner e-ticket, the facial recognition ticket-purchasing system, and channels for purchasing Skyliner tickets through travel agencies. The entire seat reservation system is currently out of operation, and the official restoration time has not yet been announced.
This service interruption has brought inconvenience to passengers traveling between Narita Airport and Tokyo. Because all online reservation and ticket-purchasing channels have been suspended, passengers can currently only purchase tickets in person at stations, resulting in large numbers of passengers queuing in front of the ticket window at Keisei Ueno Station. As of 13:00 on November 15, the official Keisei Electric Railway website remained under emergency maintenance, though train operations themselves were unaffected.
For users who may be affected, Keisei Electric Railway said it will subsequently send notifications one by one via the email addresses registered with their accounts. At present, the official cause of the illegal access incident and detailed investigation results have not been announced.
Currently, passengers can only purchase Skyliner tickets at station ticket windows or ticket machines. In addition, passengers who had previously purchased tickets through Skyliner Ticketless Service or the facial recognition-enabled Skyliner e-ticket also need to first go to a station window or ticket machine to purchase tickets again and explain their previous ticket purchase to staff. Keisei Electric Railway will subsequently issue refunds to the relevant passengers.