Cyber attack crashes city council website with other UK authorities targeted

A city council website has been taken offline after being targeted in a cyber attack, with other local authorities confirming they were previously affected.

Portsmouth City Council said it was one of a number of local authorities across the country hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by a group named NoName057(16).

It added that user and residents’ data were not at risk from the attack.

A DDoS involves the attacker flooding a server or website with internet traffic originating from more than one source.

NoName057(16), operating an account on social media platform X, claimed earlier this week it had successfully hacked more than a dozen local authorities including Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole (BCP) Council, Medway Council, Exeter City Council and Burnley Town Council.

Portsmouth City Council said in a Facebook post on Friday: “We can confirm that the Portsmouth City Council website is undergoing a cyber attack, which means you will experience issues when trying to use the site.

“No council services are affected by the attack, and user and residents’ data are not at risk, however, the website may be for an unknown period.

“We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Sarah Chamberlain, BCP Council’s director of IT and programmes, confirmed the authority was among those also targeted by an attack but only faced two hours of disruption after acting “swiftly and effectively”.

She said: “We are fully prepared to respond to any attempted cyber-attacks and our IT teams acted swiftly and effectively to put these plans in place earlier this week when our corporate websites were attacked.

“The attack attempted to disrupt our online services, but we were able to work with our provider to restore function to all our websites in just over two hours. We remain vigilant and continue to monitor the websites closely.”

Middlesborough Council posted on X that its website had been temporarily taken offline on Wednesday after being targeted by “suspected online hackers”, and was back up and running the following day.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said it had provided guidance to affected councils.

An NCSC spokesperson said: “Whilst DDoS attacks are relatively low in sophistication and impact, they can cause disruption by preventing legitimate users from accessing online services.

“Organisations are encouraged to familiarise themselves with our actionable Denial of Service guidance to support the prevention and mitigation of such attacks.”