The public wi-fi network across around 19 railway stations managed by the UK's Network Rail have been hacked and remain inaccessible on Thursday as British Transport Police (BTP) investigate the cyber-attack.

Network Rail said a number of London stations, including London Euston and Paddington, and Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central were among those targeted. Passengers trying to log on to public wi-fi at the Network Railway-managed stations were hit with a screen with a message about terror attacks in Europe.

"Last night the public wi-fi at 19 of Network Rail's managed stations was subjected to a cyber security incident and was quickly taken off-line," said a Network Rail spokesperson.

"The incident is subject to a full investigation. The wi-fi is provided by a third party, is self-contained and is a simple 'click & connect' service that doesn't collect any personal data. Once our final security checks have been completed, we anticipate the service will be restored by the weekend," the spokesperson said.

Telent, the company that manages the wi-fi system, said the attack first reported on Wednesday evening came from someone running the wi-fi homepage and the matter is now being dealt with by the police.

"An unauthorised change was made to the Network Rail landing page from a legitimate Global Reach administrator account and the matter is now subject to criminal investigations by the British Transport Police (BTP)," reads the Telent statement.

BTP said it is working at pace with its investigation: "We received reports at around 5.03pm yesterday (Wednesday) of a cyber-attack displaying Islamophobic messaging on some Network Rail Wi-Fi services. We are working alongside Network Rail to investigate the incident at pace." Earlier this month, Transport for London (TfL) was hit by a cyber-attack which is feared to have potentially breached customers' details. A teenager from Walsall, West Midlands, was arrested in connection with the TfL hack.

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