Europe's latest data breach just cost almost thousands of customer data stolen from the United Kingdom's biggest parking service apps.
EasyPark Group, the parent company of RingGo and ParkMobile, announced that hackers were able to steal customer names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, and even credit card numbers in the latest cyberattack.
The data breach was first spotted on Dec. 10, Sunday. EasyPark has already notified European cybersecurity authorities of the breach and has since launched their investigations.
The parking app operator did not provide a specific number of compromised accounts but said at least 950 RingGo users in the UK were affected.
EasyPark assured that its 50 million US ParkMobile users were not affected by the data breach with the "majority of users affected are users in Europe."
Its ParkMobile app in the US has already been breached before in 2021, exposing the personal data of high-profile individuals like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Cause for Data Breach on EasyPark Apps
Despite the attack already being weeks away, the company remains unaware of the motive of the attack nor the perpetrators responsible for it.
As of writing, EasyPark has yet to receive a ransom demand from the hackers.
The company has already warned its users to be aware of phishing attacks following the data breach, alerting its European customers to be more careful in accessing links from accounts that claim to represent the app operator.
Cyberattacks Increases Across the European Grid
The data breach on EasyGroup is only the latest report of the increasing cyberattacks across the continent.
Throughout 2023, European countries have experienced a spike of data breaches and ransomware attacks, particularly in the energy sector, Politico reported.
Another study indicates that Europe cyberattacks have surged 57% from 2022 to 2023.
Security experts point the cyberattacks to the "Russian Federation and non-democratic countries" due to the uptrend of cyberattacks being recorded soon after Russia invaded Ukraine.
More companies have since hired cybersecurity firms to improve their protection against further attacks.
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