Portsmouth City Council reports DDoS cyberattack

Portsmouth City Council has confirmed a cyberattack that has disrupted access to its website.

This attack is claimed by the cyber group NoName057(16) and was executed as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to overwhelm the council's website with traffic to render it inaccessible.

The attack caused website disruptions, preventing residents from accessing the council’s online services; The council claims that no critical services have been affected, and no personal data breaches have been reported.

The council has communicated the disruption to the public and assured that its teams are actively working to mitigate the attack's impact and respond to queries during working hours.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is aware of the attacks on local authorities and has provided guidance to the impacted councils. They noted that while DDoS attacks are generally unsophisticated, they can significantly disrupt public access to essential online services.