German railway operator Deutsche Bahn hit by cyberattack

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn has confirmed that disruption to its IT and booking systems on Tuesday was caused by a cyberattack, reported dpa.

The company said on Wednesday its systems were once again working normally.

It did not provide any information about who might have carried out the attack.

The IT problems began on Tuesday afternoon. Both the company's DB Navigator app and its website, bahn.de, were affected.

The systems provide timetable information and allow customers to book tickets. By Tuesday evening, the company said the systems were "largely stable," but there were further problems on Wednesday morning.

"Our defence measures have taken effect in order to keep the impact on our customers as low as possible for the time being," said a Deutsche Bahn spokesman.

Nevertheless, there were still some temporary restrictions in the IT and booking systems.

The rail operator said it had been a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. These involve thousands of hijacked computers or devices simultaneously sending so many requests to a website or an app that they stop working.

For users, it looks as if the site is offline, even though it has not been technically broken. The aim of such attacks is usually to blackmail or sabotage companies or authorities, or to put political pressure on them.