Arrests Made in LNG Railcar Hack

At today’s press conference in Franklawn, Johnathan Quest announced that the FBI had arrested two individuals in connection with the cyberattack on the liquified natural gas railcar that was subsequently parked on a siding outside of this small Pennsylvania town. He confirmed that they were loosely tied to the protest group, Frack No More. George P. Mitchell and Willi Barnett are currently being held in the Franklawn jail pending their transfer to a federal facility in Philadelphia.

Floyd Faris, founder of the group, acknowledged that the two individuals had been members of Frack No More but had left the group over policy disagreements. “They wanted to move beyond protests and picketing,” Faris explained. He did note that the attack never increased the level of danger the public was exposed to during the transportation of LNG.

George Schneider, founder and CEO of Schneider Gas, the company that owned the affected railcar, said: “I am happy to see that these two have been arrested, but I will be happier when I am notified that the TransTrac vulnerability is fixed.”

Chief Margaret Stevenson from the Franklawn Fire Department was asked if the public had been in any danger. She responded: “No. The pressure in the railcar never reached unsafe levels. Schneider Gas responded quickly and helped the Department deal with the problem. If it were not for the illegal hack on the railcar, I would treat this as a successful emergency response drill.”

She explained that in accordance with Department training and guidance from the Railroad Safety Administration, her teams had responded to the rail siding where the LNG car had been parked by the Genovese and Newark Railroad. An immediate evacuation of about 20 families living within a mile of the siding was undertaken and methane detectors were set up around the siding. The Schneider team arrived and attached a flare-line to the railcar to allow unsafe pressures to be safely reduced and set-up for unloading the railcar into trucks.

“Schneider and I agreed that unloading should proceed, even though there were no actual safety concerns about the railcar,” Chief Stevenson explained. They both doubted that the railroad would accept the railcar with the flawed reporting device.

Immanuel C. Securitage from ECS-CERT confirmed that the same vulnerability that was used in the Los Angeles traffic hack was used to attack the reporting system on the LNG railcar. “While TransTrac utilized a slightly different GPS tracking device than those used on cars, the same flaw in the information control system at GPS Associates allowed the attackers to provide false information to the railroad,” Securitage reported.

Quest told reporters that both suspects had confessed to their parts in the situation. “They are both proud of the fact that they stopped this railroad shipment of LNG,” Quest said; “Their mistaken opinion will make their transition into the federal penal system quite quick.” Both will be arraigned in Philadelphia on federal computer fraud charges on Monday.

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