The Polish railway cyberattack is a series of suspected sabotage attempts in August 2023 aimed at the Polish State Railways.
The "radio stop" command system has a vulnerability - when a certain three tonal signal is transmitted through the railway radio network, trains stop automatically. [1]
At 9:23 on two sections of line near Szczecin a stop signal was broadcast by an unknown person. [1] It affected more than 20 trains and freight traffic was stopped as a precaution. [1] Services were restored within hours. [2]
Around 6pm near Gdynia a second incident took place - a freight train was also affected later that evening. [1]
Trains near Białystok were affected by fake stop signals. [1] Five passenger trains and one freight train were stopped. [3] Two men were arrested in connection with the disruption near Białystok. [3] One suspect is a police officer. [3] Prosecutors opened an investigation. [3]
Police in Białystok announced they had begun a dismissal procedure against the officer arrested on Sunday. [3] Sixteen people have been arrested as suspects in spying for Russia. [3]
The disruptions are being investigated both by police and intelligence organisations, including the Internal Security Agency. [3]
Some of the disruptive signals included the Russian anthem and part of a speech by Vladimir Putin. [2]
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area.
The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate, and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU, is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The GRU controls the military intelligence service and maintains its own special forces units.
The Polish State Railways is the dominant railway operator in Poland. The company was founded when the former Polish State Railways state-owned enterprise was divided into several units based on the need for separation between infrastructure management and transport operations. Polish State Railways is the dominant company in PKP Group collective that resulted from the split, and maintains in 100% share control, being fully responsible for the assets of all of the other PKP Group component companies. The group's organisations are dependent upon Polish State Railways, but proposals for privatisation have been made.
The Cambrian Line, sometimes split into the Cambrian Main Line and Cambrian Coast Line for its branches, is a railway line that runs from Shrewsbury, England, westwards to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli in Wales. Passenger train services are operated by Transport for Wales Rail between the western terminals of Pwllheli, in Gwynedd, and Aberystwyth, in Ceredigion, and the eastern terminal at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, as part of the Wales & Borders franchise. The railway line is widely regarded as scenic, as it passes through the Cambrian Mountains in central Wales, and along the coast of Cardigan Bay in Snowdonia National Park.
PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. is the Polish railway infrastructure manager, responsible for maintenance of rail tracks, conducting the trains across the country, scheduling train timetables, and management of railway land.
The history of rail transport in Poland dates back to the first half of the 19th century when railways were built under Prussian, Russian, and Austrian rule. Of course, "divided Poland" in the 19th century was the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and not that one of today's Republic of Poland. After Polish independence was declared on 11 November 1918, the independent Polish state administered its own railways until control was surrendered to German and Soviet occupiers during World War II.
Broad Gauge Metallurgy Line is the longest broad gauge railway line in Poland.
Rail transport in Ukraine is a mode of transport by railway in Ukraine. Most railway infrastructure transport in Ukraine is owned by the government of Ukraine through Ukrzaliznytsia, which has a country-wide monopoly on passenger and freight transport by rail. Part of the rail network in eastern Ukraine was privatized in the late 1990s, creating the biggest private railway company in the country, Lemtrans, which focuses on freight transport.
The Polish railways network consists of around 18,510 kilometres (11,500 mi) of track as of 2019, of which 11,998 km (7,455 mi) is electrified. The national electrification system runs at 3 kV DC.
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Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway is a 1,333 km (828 mi) long railway, built in the 19th century by the Russian Empire to connect Russia with Central Europe. At the time the entire railway was within the Russian Empire: Warsaw was under a Russian partition of Poland. Due to territorial changes, the line now lies within five countries and crosses the eastern border of the European Union three times. Therefore, no passenger trains follow the entire route. Passenger trains between Saint Petersburg and Warsaw used to travel through Brest instead and a new line called Rail Baltica is under development to improve the direct connection between Poland and Lithuania.
The Grodzisk Mazowiecki–Zawiercie railway better known as the Central Rail Line, designated by Polish national railway infrastructure manager PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe as rail line number 4, is a 224 km (139 mi) long railway line in Poland between Zawiercie outside the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Area and Grodzisk Mazowiecki in the suburbs of Warsaw.
The Frankfurt (Oder) station is the main passenger station in Frankfurt (Oder). It is one of the most important railway stations in the German state of Brandenburg. It is served by regional and long-distance services and since 1945 it has been a border station for transport to and from Poland. The station has been substantially rebuilt several times. A building on the grounds of the first Frankfurt station, north of the current station, is heritage-listed, as are the Kiliansberg apartments, which were built as a railway settlement at the station forecourt, and a monument to railwaymen who fell in the First World War in the same area.
The Szczekociny rail crash occurred on 3 March 2012 when two passenger trains collided head-on near the town of Szczekociny, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. Sixteen people died in the incident and 58 were injured. An investigative report showed that the cause of the crash was due to human error by train dispatchers and the train drivers.
The Belarusian-Polish border is the state border between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Belarus. It has a total length of 398.6 km (247.7 mi), 418 km (260 mi) or 416 km (258 mi). It starts from the triple junction of the borders with Lithuania in the north and stretches to the triple junction borders with Ukraine to the south. It is also part of the EU border with Belarus. The border runs along the administrative borders of two Voivodships Podlaskie and Lubelskie in the Polish side and Grodno and Brest Vobłasć in the Belarusian side. In the Polish side, the 246.93 km (153.44 mi) section is under the protection of the Podlaskie Border Guard Unit, while the 171.31 km (106.45 mi) section is in the operation area of the Bug River Border Guard Unit. Border rivers are Czarna Hańcza, Wołkuszanka, Świsłocz, Narew, and Bug.
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The rail war began in different regions of Russia in the spring of 2022 after a similar rail war in Belarus.
Events in the year 2023 in Poland.