Local Person of Cork City Investigated over Hacking of Council’s Parking App

The Crime Unit of Garda Computer has been drafted to find about the hacking that illegally accessed personal information of 5,000 people's collected by the Cork City Council. Cork, a city in the south-west of Ireland, is third largest city of Ireland.

The detectives belonging to Garda unit are probing on the breach of more than thousand users of the "Cork City Park by Phone" app. The app that was encroached and further hacked by the attackers had many confidential information of the users stored in it. Hackers after attacking the app may have stolen the user's information like addresses, names, vehicle registration numbers and phone numbers. The detectives investigating the case confirmed that the scrutiny on the case is going on.

However, a statement was issued by Park Magic, which affirmed that no confidential information, like debit card or credit card information, bank account information and so on, was accessed due to this breach. The statement further confirmed that neither any account balances were changed nor any passwords were stolen.

The company further said that, "Please note that Park Magic will never contact you requesting your bank account or credit/debit card details".

Operators Park Magic along with the Crime unit of Garda Computer and the Data Protection Commissioner are all working together to find out how did the security breach happen.

Initially it was presumed that the hacking has been carried out by the international data thieves. These international criminals usually hack the websites, steal the information and sell them on dark web. However, the detectives of Garda Computers found out that this parking app hacking was carried out by a local hacker, which was a major breakthrough in the case. The motive of the hacker is still unknown.

The investigation team is now questioning the hacker about the breach, and many phones, laptops and hard drives have been seized by the investigative team.

DPC (Data Protection Commissioner) said that first data breach happened in the month of May this year. As per a statement from DPC, "the council reports that this compromised login allowed a third party to effectively masquerade as an APP on the desktop and automate access attempts and that the first instance of this breach occurred on May 22, 2018".

» SPAMfighter News - 10/19/2018