Fota Wildlife Park hit by cyberattack

Fota Wildlife Park in Cork, Ireland, has been struck by a cyberattack and is advising customers to block their credit card if they used it to pay on the park’s website.

In an email to customers, the wildlife park says it became aware of ‘illegal activity’ on its website and has launched an investigation with external forensic cybersecurity experts to identify what information may have been exfiltrated.

“If you have a user account on the Fota website, the username, password and email address linked to that account may have been accessed,” the Fota Wildlife Park says in the email, which was published by public broadcaster RTÉ.

As a precaution, the park suspended all access to its users accounts. If you use the same username and password combination with other online services, your best option is to change your password.

“The organization’s incident response plan was immediately activated, an internal investigation was instigated and appropriate measures were taken to secure the organization’s website,” the park states.

Anyone who bought a ticket via the park’s website between May 12 and August 27, risks that their financial information has been stolen. Fota strongly recommends those customers to cancel their credit or debit card that was used to make the payment.

The wildlife park is currently in the process of contacting all potentially affected customers. In the meantime, the park’s day-to-day operations continue as normal. Tickets aren’t currently available online, but visitors can buy a ticket on entry to the park.

Fota Island Resort, a 5-star hotel near the wildlife park, points out that it’s a separate business and is not impacted by the cyberattack.

“We wish to assure all our previous guests that there has been no cyberattack at Fota Island Resort and no customer data has been compromised. This includes any bookings made for the Fota Wildlife Park package on our website, we manage all bookings internally and no credit cards used to purchase this offer have been compromised,” the resort says in a statement.

As of writing, no hacking group or threat actor has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.