Are passenger rail control systems protected from cyberattack?

摘要

Ask transit police about rail's physical threats and they will be quick to point to past attacks—the bombings in Madrid and London or the poison gas attack in Tokyo. Ask the IT departments about cyberthreats to business computers and networks and they will surely rattle off a long list. But what about threats to railway control systems like traction-power management and SCADA systems and signaling and dispatch? What are the consequences of an attack? And who's minding the store?