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U.K.-based water utility Southern Water has affirm that hacker steal the personal information of as many as 470,000 client in a recent data breach .

Southern Water , which provide water and wastewater divine service to jillion of hoi polloi across the South East of England , said in a instruction on Tuesdaythat it be after to notify “ 5 to 10 percent ” of its customer basis that they had personal data slip by hackers during a cyberattack in January .

The utility goliath correct to say exactly how many individual are so far affected . Simon Fluendy , a voice for Southern Water , secernate TechCrunch that the company has around 4.7 million customer , and did not dispute that between 235,000 and 470,000 client had datum stolen .

Southern Water notice that the “ 5 to 10 percent ” physique is base on its ongoing forensic probe , suggesting the existent number of individuals affected could be higher .

Southern Water declined to say what datum was stolen . BBC News reportsthat cyberpunk access customers ’ dates of birth , national insurance numbers , bank account point and reference numeral .

Southern Water said it also planned to notify “ all of our current employees and some former employee ” about the breach of their personal data . In its latest annual report , Southern Water says it has more or less 6,000 employee .

The January cyberattack on Southern Water , which the society firstdisclosed on January 23 , was exact by the Black Basta ransomware group , a Russia - linked gang that last class take province for ahack on U.K. outsourcing giant Capita .

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Southern Water has not yet commented on the specific of the incident or how its systems were compromised .

Black Basta heel Southern Water on its obscure web passing water situation presently after the cyberattack last month and claimed to have stolen 750 gigabytes of sensitive data from the organization , including collective documents and customers ’ personal document .

The listing , which threatened to publish the stolen datum unless a ransom money need was paid , also included screenshots take to show some of the data stolen , include employee passports and identity wit .

At the fourth dimension of penning , Southern Water is no longer listed on Black Basta ’s site . It ’s not rare for victim companieswho pay off a ransom to the hackersto have their public listings removed . Southern Water correct to say whether it had bear a ransom demand .

In its affirmation published on Tuesday , Southern Water says it is working with cybersecurity experts to supervise the dark World Wide Web . Since the utility program ’s list on the ransomware gang ’s land site , Southern Water says it has “ find no new evidence of the data potentially involve in this cyber incident being release online . ”

Southern Water says it has apprize the U.K. ’s data protection regulator , the Information Commissioner ’s Office , about the incident .

ICO confirms datum break investigation as UK council remain fine-tune by cyberattack