AT ransomware attack: Customers urged to reset top-ups on Hop cards

Last week's outage affected Auckland Transport's Hop card.

Auckland Transport (AT) is urging customers to reset their automatic top-ups as it continues to overcome a ransomware attack that brought down the Hop card part of its computer system.

After saying last week that the Hop card issue would be resolved by today, AT public transport boss Stacey van der Putten said today that it still had a few residual issues to resolve.

Seven days ago, AT said the system was being rebuilt as quickly as possible and customers would be able to top up their cards online, at customer service centres and ticket machines from this morning and via retailers from this evening.

In a statement issued this afternoon, AT said Hop customers who used auto top-ups were asked to reset them if they were receiving an “insufficient funds” notification when tagging on.

Auckland Transport does not know yet how much the AT Hop card outage has cost.

“As we rebuilt the AT Hop system last week, customers whose auto-top-ups triggered between September 13 and September 21 have been disabled as we were unable to charge customers’ credit cards during this time,” the statement said.

No money had been deducted from customers’ credit or debit cards.

“We thank everyone for their patience as we work through the final parts of our AT Hop system restoration,” van der Putten said.

“We’ve worked really hard to bring all of the systems back online, but there have been a few residual issues which we are still resolving.

“This has been an unforeseen issue as part of the restoration. Essentially, because the system was unable to charge customers for their auto top-up within seven days, the system has reversed the attempted transaction and disabled their auto top-up. Customers should pay any outstanding balance on their card and reset their auto top-up,” van der Putten said.

“We haven’t charged customers for trips they have not taken, but customers may find they have a negative balance for trips they have taken in the past week that have not been covered by an auto top-up. We apologise to customers for this inconvenience and thank them for their patience as we work through fully restoring our system.”

Customers will need to update their auto top-up and then tag on to one of AT’s services for the update to take effect.

If a customer does not use an auto top-up, their cards should be working.

“If you are affected by the auto top-up issue, we have let our drivers and staff know that you can continue to travel until the end of the day Wednesday on buses, trains and ferries,” van der Putten said.

What customers need to do:

• Top up their AT Hop card to cover any negative balance either:
• In person at a CSC, ticket and top-up machine or AT Hop retailer.
• Customers can also top up online but this will take longer to process.
• Re-enable their AT Hop auto top-up online.

An AT spokeswoman said it was still working through the reconciliation of transactions and was unable to say how much revenue had been lost from the AT Hop outage.