Gloucester: Russian hackers behind cyber-attack on council

Gloucester City Council had to rebuild all of its servers after the cyber attack

Russian hackers were behind the "sophisticated cyber-attack" which knocked out council services, it has been confirmed.

Gloucester City Council has now concluded its investigation into the attack which saw their IT systems compromised in 2021.

It caused damage to the council's network and online services, with a number of systems taken offline.

The city council has been working with cyber incident response experts.

While some information the city council holds about residents may have been accessed during the cyber attack, to date nothing taken has been published online.

They believe it is now unlikely that any information will be published based on advice the council has received from law enforcement agencies.

'Challenging period'

Jon McGinty, the council's managing director, said: "This has been a challenging period and I want to thank our residents for their patience and understanding.

"This criminal group targeted our council to disrupt our public services in an attempt to extort a ransom payment from the council."

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has previously reported that cyber criminals linked to Russia were behind the attack it is the first time this has been officially acknowledged by the authority.

The council worked with the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, as well as informing the Information Commissioner's Office to minimise any further risks.

Earlier this year, the government sanctioned seven individuals associated with Conti, the criminal group thought to be involved in this incident.

This group has also been behind attacks which targeted several other organisations including hospitals, schools, businesses and other local authorities.