Massive council hit by cyber attack that may have stolen customer data

Hackers may have stolen personal data in a devastating cyber attack on the Glasgow city council.

The cyber strike impacted planning applications, paying for parking, driving fines and bin collections in Scotland’s largest city.

‘Malicious activity’ was discovered by the authority on services managed by a third-party supplier on Thursday June 19.

Police Scotland are investigating the hack, alongside the council, the Scottish Cyber Co-ordination Centre and the National Cyber Security Centre.

The hack has forced Glasgow city council to pull affected services offline for its 625,000 residents.

Also affected are household schedules for bin collections and a pension fund portal for Strathclyde.

When Metro tried to access the council’s Online Planning portal, a message pops up saying: ‘There is currently a fault with our Online Planning Portal. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible.’

The council said the loss of web-based services was caused by the isolation of the servers, rather than the cyber incident.

The authority stressed no financial systems had been hacked and no bank account or card details had been compromised.

It caps off a string of cyber attacks on Scottish local authorities in recent months.

Edinburgh and West Lothian councils were both targeted by malicious activity in May.

In a statement, the local authority said: ‘At this stage we can’t confirm whether data has actually been removed and, if so, what that data is.

‘As a precaution, we are operating on the presumption that customer data related to the currently unavailable web forms may have been exfiltrated, and we have contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office on this basis.

‘Until such time as we can ascertain if data has been stolen, and what this may be, we advise anyone who has used any of the affected forms to be particularly cautious about any contact claiming to be from Glasgow City Council.

‘Glasgow city council apologises for the anxiety and inconvenience this will undoubtedly cause.’

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