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Continental rail service Eurostar has contacted customers with online accounts asking them to reset their passwords as the company works to improve the security of its users.
However, due to technical issues, users are unable to reset or even log into their accounts, effectively excluding them completely.
Eurostar’s official email to customers states that in order to continue using their account they must reset their password, followed by a link to the page where they can do this.
The problem is that following this link and starting the process throws this error message from the site: “Sorry, we’re having some technical difficulties, so we can’t send the email right now. Please try again later.”
A possible security breach?
Beeping computer (opens in new tab) recently tested the issue and found that the issue persists. Customers are understandably frustrated, with some expressing anger social media (opens in new tab).
When customers keep trying to access their account they are greeted with a request to reset the password which then results in the aforementioned technical error message so they get stuck in this unsolvable loop and cannot access at all their accounts.
Another twitter user speculated that this error sounded like a “data breach situation”, and others suspected (opens in new tab) the official email they received as a phishing scam due to the presence of the link and not addressing it by name.
This debacle follows on the heels of another debacle at the rail company as there were problems with Club Eurostar members last Friday with their booking disappearing completely, but the insured customers (opens in new tab) that the bookings were still in the system – just not visible to users.
On this matter, the company advised (opens in new tab) “If you can’t access your account, please clear your device’s cookies and reset your password. If you don’t receive the password reset link, please register again using the same email address you you have used for your account.”
However, some customers responded that these solutions didn’t work for them, and given the more recent password reset issue, this part of the advice doesn’t work either.
BleepingComputer could not confirm whether the technical issues were due to a security incident and when asked for comment, a Eurostar spokesperson responded with the following statement:
“Our customers have been contacted to reset their password following an update to our customer authentication system. The sudden number of customers attempting this has caused technical issues and we are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause has caused.”