Liverpool City Council has revealed that it has suffered repeated cyber attacks.
A new report outlined how the local authority was targeted numerous times by a Russian state-funded group named Noname057(16) over the past two years.
Bots are often used to try and inflitrate or disable councils across the UK with the council confirming it had received ‘significant attention’ from the hackers.
If effective, the attacks could lead to the takedown of public-facing websites.
But the findings, which will be brought before LCC’s auditors, said that its robust security systems had prevented a ‘successful ransomware attack’ for nine years.
The report states: “Noname057(16) is a state-linked Russian hacktivist group that attacks western targets, mostly government, military, transport and health.
“We have experienced many attacks from this group and their allies using their Distributed Botnet over the last two years.
“Denial of Service attacks for monetary or political reasons is a widespread risk for any company with a web presence or that relies on internet-based systems.”