Exclusive: Councils face up to 200 cyber attacks a second

An investigation by the Yorkshire Post has revealed councils across the region are enduring thousands of external attacks upon their IT systems every day – with East Riding Council last year recording an average of more than two attacks every second and up to 200 a second at peak times.

The attacks come from all over the world, with a large number originating from North Africa, and are designed by criminals to exploit the treasure-trove of personal information that councils hold, as well as sending out spam email messages, spreading viruses, committing fraud and disrupting computers and servers.

Despite local authorities spending hundreds of thousands pounds to ensure the vast majority of these attacks are unsuccessful, Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Yorkshire Post show there have been a number of security breaches.

With Home Office figures suggesting e-crime is now a £27bn a year industry in England and the attacks becoming increasingly complex, council chiefs have expressed fears they may not be able to keep up with the cyber criminals in the coming years.

Kirklees and Barnsley councils have suffered several breaches by hackers and viruses on school networks since 2009, while Craven District Council launched an investigation in 2010 after senior council officers’ emails containing confidential information on senior councillors were hacked into and leaked on to public websites.

York Council’s website was hacked into last year, while Harrogate Borough Council suffered a prolonged “denial of service attack” – designed to prevent people logging on to its internet network.

Last month, a police investigation was launched after Hambleton District Council’s voicemail was hacked into and the numbers options reconfigured to redirect calls all over the world at a cost of more than £20,000 to the local authority.

Coun Neville Huxtable, the leader of Hambleton District Council, said: “I felt absolutely shattered that somebody was able to get right into the heart of our operation.

“It is very concerning for our staff and a worry to all of our residents. We are big organisations and we hold a lot of details.

“I’m not aware that we were paying a huge amount of attention to it other than the fact we decided we were safe. You can feel fairly well guarded, and then it just happens.”

A Government-funded national flagship centre is being set up in the region to tackle e-crime. The new scheme, between York Council and North Yorkshire County Council, will create a specialist internet crime laboratory providing technical expertise to investigators across the country.

Graham Venn, assistant director of North Yorkshire County Council and head of the new e-crime centre, said: “This is a huge threat to local authorities and it is taken very seriously.

“This is a goldmine to these people. If they get into the local authority’s address book they have a cattle market with thousands of employers each with their own address book.

“Now we are faced with a completely new challenge and we have got to think in different ways.

“At the moment there is a very positive message about trying to tackle this issue – I am uncertain about the future.”

The Yorkshire Post continues its investigation into internet crime tomorrow, detailing the unprecedented Facebook raids that are now taking place on counterfeiters across the region.