Gloucester City Council hit by a possible Ransomware Cyber Attack

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Gloucester City Council of UK was reportedly hit by a cyber attack on December 20th,2021 disrupting all of its online services such as council tax support, Caravan site information, Licensing, Recycling, Health and Leisure Centers, Housing Administration, Elections and Electoral Registration, Public Conveniences, test and trace support, housing benefits including payments and loan repay.

Though there is no confirmed news that the attack was of a ransomware virus, sources report that the restoration of services might take a few weeks as the incident seems to be more complicated after preliminary investigations were concluded.

Council reported the issue to the National Crime Agency (NCA) and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to launch a detailed inquiry that is underway.

Gloucester City Council website’s home page is guiding its web traffic to some links in a hope of solving some taxing issues. However, information is out that those services are failing to open/connect due to some technical issues with certain ISPs.

Those wishing to claim benefits might contact the council via an email at “’benefits at gloucester dot gov dot uk”

Note 1- Formed on April 1st 1974, the council has now been split into 18 wards and is governed by over 39 councilors elected to rule the city council.

Note 2- A ransomware is a kind of malware attack where hackers steal data and then encrypt the entire database until a ransom is paid. Earlier, the threat actors only used to lock down the database until a ransom in cryptocurrency was paid. But now they are involved in double extortion tactics where they sell the data if the victim fails to pay the demanded ransom for any reason.

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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