Irish Fota Wildlife Park reports data breach, asks customers to cancel cards
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Fota Wildlife Park, located in County Cork, Ireland, is reporting a cyberattack and data breach involving payment card information.
Fota initially disabled access to its website upon discovering the breach, engaged forensic cybersecurity experts to investigate. They have also notified Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) and the Gardaí (police).
Potentially compromised data includes:
- Payment card information (debit or credit cards)
- Usernames
- Passwords
- Email addresses
The park has contacted all affected users via email and is warning individuals who conducted financial transactions on its website between May 12 and August 27, 2024, to immediately cancel their debit or credit cards through their respective banks to prevent any potential fraudulent activity.
The park clarified that this advice only pertains to online transactions. Visitors who purchased tickets or made other purchases in person at the park do not need to cancel their cards.
Users who reused their Fota website password for other accounts are advised to change those passwords immediately.
The nature of the attack and the exact number of individuals affected by the breach has not been disclosed. However, a comparable cyberattack at Oregon Zoo, discovered last month, may have compromised the payment card details of nearly 120,000 customers due to an attack on a third-party vendor managing online ticket purchases. This suggests that the scale of the Fota Wildlife Park breach could also be substantial.
