Online Payments for Water Services Intercepted By Hackers

The City of Waco warns residents that their online payments for water services may have been impeded by hackers who stole credit card details.

As per a spokesperson for the City of Waco, the Click2Gov portal for water bill payments was breached by vindictive hackers who had the option to plant pernicious code that redirected sensitive data between August 30th and October 14th.

Security researchers have been following these attacks against Click2Gov's payment portals for two or three years now, with numerous reports of breaches including the urban areas extending across the United States and Canada, bringing about a thousands of payment card details being traded on the dark web.

The core of the issue is said to have been the third-party online payment software that Waco and a few other urban communities and regions use to let residents pay their bills, pay parking fines, just as make other financial transactions. CentralSquare Technologies, the creators of Click2Gov, counters that lone a "limited number" of Click2Gov customers have announced unauthorized access by hackers and that a vulnerability they recognized in the portal has now been closed.

As indicated by media reports, on account of the latest breach including water utility payments, the City of Waco was informed regarding the issue with the Click2Gov software on November 8, 2019.

City representative Larry Holze says, “Of the 44,000 water customers, typically we receive 12,500 payments online each month. During the period identified, a little over 8,000 customers were mailed letters. Payments made with a credit card inside the water office (not online) are not involved in this incident.”

Consumers affected by the breach can hope to get a letter from the city the previous week informing them about the occurrence and advising them whenever required on the means that ought to be taken to secure against such fraud.

“We’ve sent out letters to all those people who they’ve been able to give us that have been compromised, in some fashion, asking them to be careful and watch their statements and make sure something doesn’t show up,” said spokesman Holze.

The city has additionally set up a hotline for residents with inquiries regarding the breach, accessible from Monday to Friday on 833-947-1419.7

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