London transport body Tfl said it has been the victim of a major database hack that has prompted it to call in the UK’s National Crime Agency.
Early indications were that customer data had not been compromised or transport services affected, but the full extent of any damage was not yet certain.
Shashi Verma, TfL’s Chief Technology Officer, said in a statement: “We have introduced a number of measures to our internal systems to deal with an ongoing cyber security incident.
“Although we’ll need to complete our full assessment, at present, there is currently no evidence that any customer data has been compromised.”
Several organisations have reported significant cyber attacks in recent months including the NHS, which was targeted by a Russian hacking group Quiiln through its pathology services provider Synnovis.
Microsoft has also noted an increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, where hackers overload a system by swamping it with requests causing it to crash often with a demand for payment to end the attack.
Only yesterday, Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LSE:LLOY), Virgin Money and Nationwide reported their apps suffered an outage due to problems at Microsoft.
That followed similar problems with their apps reported by NatWest Group PLC (LSE:NWG), HSBC and TSB last week.