Cyberattack disrupts parking payments in Russian city

The Russian city of Perm has restored its parking payment system after a cyberattack last week knocked the service offline and temporarily made parking free for several days.

City authorities confirmed Monday that the system is now fully operational and that all payment methods are working normally.

The disruption was caused by a large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that overwhelmed the city’s automated parking payment infrastructure, according to local officials.

It is at least the third such incident to affect parking systems in Russian cities in recent years. In January last year, drivers in Krasnodar were unable to pay for parking after a telecommunications operator was hit by a DDoS attack that disrupted related services.

Parking payments in the city of Tver were also disrupted in October 2024 after a destructive cyberattack targeted the local city administration’s network.

That attack was later claimed by the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, a group of pro-Ukraine hacktivists that has conducted operations against Russian government and corporate systems since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The incident last week in Perm forced authorities to suspend parking payments across the city, preventing drivers from paying through the official app and website.

Officials said drivers would not face penalties for unpaid parking between March 10 and March 13 while the system was down. Paid parking zones in Perm are normally free on weekends.

In its attack in 2024 against the city of Tver, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said it had wiped “dozens of virtual machines, backup storage, websites, email, and hundreds of workstations” belonging to the city administration.

It remains unclear whether the Perm incident is linked to previous attacks. No hacker group has claimed responsibility.

The attack is the latest in a series of cyber incidents affecting services in Russia. Earlier in January, a cyberattack on a major bread producer in Russia’s Vladimir region disrupted food deliveries. 

An attack on a Russian provider of alarm and security systems for homes, businesses, and vehicles the same month caused widespread service outages and a wave of customer complaints, and another incident also affected booking and check-in systems used by Russian airlines and airports.